Farming on Dartmoor

Gary Streeter Excerpts

Tuesday 18th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox) for not just securing this debate and making such a powerful speech but leading the charge for us all in Devon in relation to Dartmoor over the last 12 months. It has been a joy to work with the other three Dartmoor Members of Parliament, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), whose representative on earth, my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), is with us this afternoon. All of us have been working together to bring about a better outcome for our farmers and commoners.

I will make a few quick points. It will be difficult enough to balance all the competing interests on Dartmoor. First, there is the importance of access for recreation and leisure, especially post lockdown and given the mental health issues about which we all know very well. Secondly, there are the legitimate rights and interests of landowners—we have heard a bit about that from my right hon. and learned Friend. Thirdly, there are the interests and needs of the farmers and commoners whose families have been farming Dartmoor for generations, and other moor communities. Finally, there is the need to protect and see flourish nature and biodiversity for the long-term sustainability of often overlapping and sometimes competing interests. All of that would be difficult enough to balance if all stakeholders were collaborating and pulling together, working hand in hand towards meeting a set of common goals, but sadly we have not seen that collaborative approach in recent years. Especially in the past three months, it has been very far from that, and Natural England’s heavy-handed, clumsy approach has caused alarm and distress among farming communities the length and breadth of the moor and more widely. My right hon. and learned Friend covered that in some detail.

If Natural England accepts that the situation has been badly handled and now wants to work more collaboratively with other stakeholders, that is hugely to be welcomed and we should look forward, not backwards. However, from my conversations with hill farmers in recent weeks, including two yesterday, it is clear that there has been a breakdown in trust. I will not say that it is irretrievable, but it is serious. I therefore strongly support the call for an independent process to get to the bottom of how we get the balance right and protect the moor without damaging beyond repair the long-established practice of farming on the commons. I hope the Minister will confirm that DEFRA will embrace and facilitate the independent process that all parties appear to have agreed at the meeting on 4 April. It is important that Natural England becomes a trusted partner once again to enable long-term solutions to be found by consensus.

Whatever the Minister says in his response, it is clear that time and space must be given for any changes to be made. I grew up on a dairy farm not far from Dartmoor, and my father milked Channel Island cows—Jerseys and Guernseys in the main. In those days, there was a premium for Channel Island milk—the Minister is probably too young to remember that—because it was creamier, so the Government paid a bit more for it. I remember the horrible day when the letter came from the then Ministry of Agriculture saying, with little warning, that the premium was going to be removed. I remember my late mother being in tears for days over that, wondering how we would survive. Although the premium was taken away in just a few short months, it took my parents three to four years to change the herd to Friesians, which as most farmers know give an awful lot more milk, to enable them to recover the lost income. It was a tough few years while we transitioned.

Farming is not like manufacturing widgets: farmers cannot just flick a switch and increase or reduce production levels overnight. If we are going to ask farmers to reduce stocking levels, once the case has been made, there has to be time for transition. If possible, the existing agri-environment agreement should be left in place while the independent process is carried out. Many of the five-year HLS agreements are coming to an end over the next six months or so, so we would like them to be left in place if possible. I hope the Minister will talk long and hard with his officials about that. If that is not possible legally, I strongly support the “one plus four” proposals that were discussed at the 4 April meeting.

Whatever happens, the process must be evidence based. The farmers need to see Natural England’s workings. What is it basing its assumptions on? It must be related to Dartmoor, not to moorlands further north—I am sure they are wonderful, but Dartmoor is its own complex ecosystem, so we need statistics and evidence gathered from Dartmoor.

Finally, I hope that out of the stress of the past few months—it has been stressful for many of our constituents—an exemplar for the future will emerge. We were promised that, once we left the EU and the common agricultural policy, our support for farmers would be less bureaucratic and more tailor-made and farmer-friendly. Perhaps the jury is still out on that, but if in the months ahead genuine dialogue is undertaken with all the interested parties and agreement is reached about the long-term benefits to nature and communities on Dartmoor, that model could be built on for other communities. This has been a crisis, but out of it can come an opportunity. I urge our widely respected farming Minister to play his part in making that come about.

Support for British Farming

Gary Streeter Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Westminster Hall

2.30 pm

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Welcome to this important debate about British farming. It is a delight to call Simon Jupp to move the motion.

[Simon Jupp (East Devon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for British farming.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I am delighted to have secured this timely debate, which is an opportunity for colleagues from across the House to voice their support for British farming. We have a lot to celebrate, alongside some concerns.

As the Member of Parliament for East Devon, I am proud to represent a corner of the UK with an extremely rich farming heritage. Devon’s farmers play a key role in the life of our county. Around 100,000 people get a snippet of that every year at the Devon County Show at Westpoint arena, which is held almost every July.

We know that the freshest, most sustainable and best produce is both local and seasonal. Local produce from across the south-west is found on shelves across the UK and around the globe. With that in mind, trade deals are of benefit to our region. We must take advantage of our Brexit freedoms, but we must also work harder to take the farming community with us. Leaving the EU allows the UK to leave behind a bureaucratic and inefficient farming policy. The Government rightly want to use our new-found powers to reward farmers for doing more to help improve the environment while also producing high-quality food.

However, the farming industry needs more certainty to both survive and thrive. I regularly hold roundtable events with the farming community in East Devon, and I hear that message about clarity loud and clear. Last month, I invited local farmers to a roundtable event with senior officials from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Rural Payments Agency. Farmers, agents and others are eager to see how various elements of the new farming funding system will underpin their sustainable and resilient businesses. Support schemes will need to be accessible and simple, and they will also need to reward farmers fairly for taking part in them.

So my first plea in this debate is that DEFRA looks to accelerate the development and roll-out of the sustainable farming incentive. Incentivising farmers to take part in rewilding schemes or to plant trees on prime agricultural land may seem a worthy policy in Whitehall, but it will not put food on the table in the west country. Farmers have said to me, “You cannot eat trees.” Needless to say, a balance is required. Food production and environmental sustainability are not necessarily in competition, and nor are they mutually exclusive, but support schemes should always encourage farmers to produce food. That is the only way to deliver on the ambition of the UK food strategy to maintain or increase our food self-sufficiency, which is all the more important given the ongoing war in Ukraine.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Colleagues can see that the debate is well attended. There are nine colleagues wishing to catch my eye, and they will have about five and a half minutes each until the winding-up speeches begin.

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[Dan Jarvis]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. I understand that there will be a debate on that subject in the House next Wednesday. That is a really important opportunity for Members to put points to the Minister, who takes these things very seriously. I hope that that debate will be well supported. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention.

On biosecurity, African swine fever is a real danger, but the Government have not yet shown that they appreciate the need for strong border checks. I would be grateful if the Minister could say something about the need to keep it out of this country. It is in Germany, and many hon. Members are concerned about the potential for it to come here.

Farmers do diligent work to keep their livestock healthy, and we all respect the fact that farming can be physically demanding. Despite recent advances in technology, it can, as we heard from the hon. Member for East Devon, still require a significant workforce, crucially at harvest time. The seasonal workers scheme must secure the labour needed to ensure that we can produce the food we need.

In response to a written question that I put to the Minister back in October, he said:

“40,000 seasonal worker visas were available in 2022”.

However, the NFU says that farmers need between 60,000 and 70,000 seasonal workers. It is important to note that those workers are not the same as other economic migrants: they return home after performing critical work and filling labour shortages. I would be grateful if the Minister could say something about what his Department is doing to ensure that supply meets demand.

Despite the large workforces sometimes required, we appreciate that farming can be a solitary experience, so we need to ensure that our young people see farming as an attractive option for their future. The Farm Safety Foundation reported in February that 92% of farmers under 40 rank poor mental health as the biggest hidden problem facing farmers. That is a concerning figure. I know that the Minister will understand this issue and take it seriously, so will he say something about the Government’s plans to target outreach to young farmers to make sure they get the support they need?

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Dan—10 seconds.

[Dan Jarvis]

To conclude, it is very important that we nurture those who feed us and that we support the stewards of our countryside so that they can fill our national larder and protect our green and pleasant land.

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[Chris Loder]

Yes, I will. The Minister has heard that request.

Finally, the NFU has called for a DEFRA investigation into the egg supply chain. The NFU is a bit late with that call, but I think it is right. I hope the Minister will take that on board. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) makes a very fair point: this is not just about eggs. Milk was 49p a pint maybe 18 months ago; it has gone up now to more than £1 a pint in most shops. Ask our dairy farmers if they have received that difference—no, they have not.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

I call Gagan Mohindra. He and the final Back-Bench speaker have five minutes each.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I applaud my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) for securing this important debate.

It was not that long ago that throughout the House we were celebrating the Back British Farming campaign. I am conscious that I am probably one of the few people present who does not have a farming background or a link to farming, but as Members know the industry employs more than 4 million people and is worth around £120 billion to the national economy. In South West Hertfordshire, about 65% of our land use is for agriculture.

As someone who does not have many years of farming experience—definitely not as many as my right hon. Friend the Minister—I have proactively spent several months learning a lot more about the industry. Back in June, I held a roundtable in conjunction with the NFU, and I think that a lot of the issues raised then are common throughout the country. They included rising costs, especially for fertiliser; the VAT threshold for those who decide to have farm shops; and rural crime, especially the theft of tools and caravans and the police response. I am lucky that in Hertfordshire we have as our police and crime commissioner David Lloyd, who is very proactive on that.

In a follow-up meeting with farmers in August, I went to the P. E. Mead farm, where they farm more than 800 acres. Although it does not feel warm today, a key issue then was heatwaves and how the changing weather patterns will influence farming in the future. I am conscious that although the Minister is an excellent farmer in his own right, he may not necessarily have the answers, but I wish to put on his radar such important issues from across the industry. Where appropriate, we need to think about how the Government can best support farmers to deal with them.

One of the other things that I did during the recess was work experience: I spent a day with farmers at the PE Mead farm so that I could fully appreciate the trials and tribulations of farmers. As mentioned earlier, mental health is a really massive issue. The Office for National Statistics figures from back in 2015 suggested that suicide rates for male farmers were three times higher than the national average. That cannot be right. We need to think about what more we can do to support this vital industry. Unfortunately, we have seen with the war in Ukraine that food security will continue to be a massive issue. Although there is pressure for the development or change of land usage, my worry is that we are losing a skillset that is really important. Once it is lost, it is lost forever.

I have a personal plea to the Minister on education. One of the few pieces of casework that I have been really successful on is in respect of school catchment areas. I had the case of a young child whose parents were famers and had to live on the farm, but because of the farm’s location they were outside the catchment area for the school that the child wanted to go to. To me, that feels like penalising a family and their children for doing the right thing and ensuring that we have continued food security. I would be grateful if the Minister could take that point away and speak to his colleagues in the Department for Education about how we can ensure that when someone is involved in critical infrastructure related to things such as food production, they have the ability to make appeals about education catchment areas and have their situation considered.

I shall finish there because I am sure that my learned colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson), has more to say.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Last but definitely not least, I call Dr Neil Hudson.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) on securing this important debate.

I am proud to represent a large rural constituency, as a constituency MP and as a Member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. My constituency has a huge farming footprint. Our farmers in Cumbria and across the UK produce food to the highest standards with the highest animal welfare standards, and we should be very proud of that fact. I pay tribute to all farmers in Penrith and The Border and across the UK for all that they do. We must remember that during the pandemic farmers were classified as key workers, and they should be classified as key workers in the future.

The cost of living, which we have heard a lot about today, is really affecting the input costs for farmers. They are not immune to such costs, which include fertiliser, animal feed, fuel and energy. The Government support in recent months—such as the energy schemes, the bringing forward of the basic payment scheme payments, the new slurry grants and the fertiliser rule changes—has been very welcome and much needed, but I stress to the Minister that the Government need to continue to provide the support that farmers need during this crisis.

We have been supporting farmers through these challenging times, and as the funding systems change it is so important that we help farmers through those changes. I have seen at first hand in Cumbria how the new environmental land management schemes can work really well for local communities, and the farming in protected landscapes scheme is very welcome in Cumbria. This issue has been a big focus of the EFRA Committee. The current situation makes it even more crucial that the payments under such schemes are set at a fair and sufficient level and are a proper reward for producing the public goods that communities rely on. It is important—our Committee has been pushing the Government hard on this—that we support all types of farmers, including tenant farmers, commoners and upland farmers.

From talking to farmers in my constituency and across Cumbria, I know that there has been a lot of anxiety during this time. I have hosted regular roadshows with them, and I visit livestock markets regularly. I have triggered an EFRA Committee inquiry on the ELMS transition period. Sadly, I think some of that anxiety and negativity is being fuelled by people briefing against the payment system and misleading people on the levels of uptake.

I was pleased to question the Minister and Janet Hughes, the senior DEFRA official involved, at the EFRA Committee meeting last week. There is a 30% uptake of the environmental schemes, both existing and new. The uptake on the new sustainable farming incentive is not as high as that because it started only this summer. I would welcome the Minister reaffirming the point that we want to encourage people to enrol in those schemes and then inform them so the schemes can be improved. It would be welcome if the Minister said we were looking into levels of payment to help farmers through this period.

We have heard a lot about food security in this debate. The issue came into sharp relief in the pandemic and has been highlighted again by the war in Ukraine. Bolstering our food security is a prime priority for the Government. The EFRA Committee has been looking at this—we are in the middle of a food security inquiry—and has heard about supplies of fertiliser to the United Kingdom. We have two plants in the UK: the one in Ince has been mothballed and the other in Billingham has ceased ammonia production. That is critical infrastructure for our country, and I urge the Government to keep watching that. We must also remember that a by-product of fertiliser production is CO₂, which is much needed by the food and beverage industry. It is also needed in the slaughter process for poultry and pigs, so there is an animal health and welfare implication. We need to secure that supply as well.

On animal health and welfare, I declare an interest as a veterinary surgeon. To support British farming, we need to have healthy animals. I welcome the Government’s progress in that area. The new animal health and welfare pathway scheme, as part of the new ELMS, is very welcome, formalising the partnership between vets and farmers. But more can be done, such as responding to the calls for investing in animal health infrastructure—we heard the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) make that point.

As a member of the EFRA Committee, I guested on the Public Accounts Committee for the inquiry on the situation at the Animal and Plant Health Agency headquarters in Weybridge. It needs a radical and drastic refurbishment, and I urge the Government to make that a key priority. I have seen this at first hand: I came into politics on the back of my experiences in the foot and mouth crisis, and I witnessed things that I never want to see again in my lifetime. The APHA needs to be funded. The Weybridge site is pivotal in our attack and defence against infectious disease. We see that critically now with the avian influenza crisis. I pay tribute to the vets, officials and farmers on the frontline in that horrendous crisis. Funding that infrastructure is so important; this is about animals and people. We have to remember that diseases can transfer from animals to people. That work looks at public health and antimicrobial resistance.

We have heard a lot about rural mental health; the impact of infectious diseases and outbreaks have a massive impact on our rural communities. I urge the Government to look at that.

In conclusion, I pay tribute to our farmers. It is possible to produce food and look after the environment at the same time. We produce food to the highest animal welfare standards. As a Government, we must keep our arms around our farmers and ensure we support them moving forward.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Thank you, colleagues for your co-operation; we have come in on time and on budget. We now turn to the Front Benches.

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[Mark Spencer]

The former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), was a very good Secretary of State. He fought tooth and nail on behalf of UK farmers during those debates, and secured a number of concessions from the Government on that journey. What we have been left with is a trade deal with Australia and New Zealand that has brought those countries closer to us and allowed us to co-operate and work with them, which will give us huge opportunities in future. There are massive markets around the world in Asia and North America where we can sell top-quality UK beef and lamb, working with Australia and New Zealand—which have the opposite seasonal activity to us—to supply those markets. Bringing them closer through those trade deals is the first step on that journey, and I am very proud of what UK farmers produce. We should celebrate that and make the most of it in trying to exploit those markets moving forward.

Turning to the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), I am delighted that his son is going to agricultural college—did he say Askham Bryan? I think he just said that it was a college in North Yorkshire, but I hope it is Askham Bryan, which I know is a very good college. If there was ever a moment when we needed bright young people to come into our sector—the next generation to take us forward—this is it, and I celebrate the fact that the hon. Gentleman has family getting involved in the sector. We should do all we can to encourage that. One of the first meetings I had when I took over as Minister was with the National Federation of Young Farmers’ Clubs, looking at some of the work it is doing to encourage young people into the sector. It is also very in tune with some of the mental health challenges that young people and farmers in rural communities are facing. Anything I can do in this job to help it on that journey, I will do.

The hon. Member for Barnsley Central also talked about biosecurity, which is very important when it comes to dealing with avian influenza: anything we can do to increase the biosecurity of some of our professional poultry units is to be welcomed. He went on to talk about African swine fever, which is a challenge that is spreading across Europe. That is why on 1 August this year, we changed the rules: we did a spot check on items coming into the UK to see how much illegal or unregistered pork meat was coming in, and have now changed the rules so that no one can import more than 2 kg at a time. Border Force employees are on their toes, looking for any violations of those rules to make sure we keep the UK safe from African swine fever—it would be a disaster if we ended up with it.

There has been a lot of talk about seasonal workers; clearly, I am not in a position to announce those figures, but we are in close discussions with our friends in the Home Office and hope to give clarity on that issue as soon as possible. That neatly takes me to the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel). She started with a series of massive plugs for her constituency and the great food producers of Essex, including Tiptree, which I do recognise as one of the premium jam producers in the world, not just the country. She went on to talk about avian influenza. It is fair to say that Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk have been at the epicentre of that disaster. My heart goes out to those poor farmers who have found themselves victims of that terrible virus. The good news, from a national point of view, is that we have robust supply chains in place. There will be turkeys for Christmas. There are some challenges in the goose market, but the chicken market is also fine.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who always attends these debates, is a great advocate for his farmers and fishermen. He was the first to raise the Grocery Code Adjudicator, along with my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder), who mentioned the adjudicator a number of times. It is important to understand what the Grocery Code Adjudicator can and cannot do. Their role is to ensure that contracts that are entered into are adhered to appropriately and not violated.

If an egg producer has signed a contract at X per dozen eggs, the supermarket has the right to expect the producer to stand by that price. The producer could procure and secure the feed supply for the same period as the life expectancy of a laying hen, which is about 14 months. The producer could sign the contract for X amount per dozen, secure the price per tonne of feed and therefore protect the margin. The price of feed has gone up exponentially and farmers have reached the point where they must make a decision on whether to enter into a new contract for a new price or at the same price. About a year ago, many of them voted with their feet and said that they were not willing to sign up to that level of contract. The retailers made a mistake when they did not to see the huge challenge coming in the egg-supply market, and we are now seeing that.

What is the role of the Government? It is to encourage conversations between retailers, primary producers and wholesalers on a regular, monthly basis. The Secretary of State and I meet the farming unions, the hospitality sector, retailers and the processing sector to ensure that those conversations take place. I hope that that will continue to bear fruit, but I acknowledge there are challenges in the sector that are not linked to avian influenza.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) has been a great advocate for farming for a long time. He was one of those who celebrated my elevation to this position. So many people celebrated my arrival at the Dispatch Box, I felt like Ronaldo must have felt when he joined Man U and all the fans celebrated. I reflect on how that worked out in the end—let’s see how that goes.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset talked about grant funding, and he will have seen today that we have announced some grant funding to help farmers improve slurry systems. We are very much committed to supporting farmers with capital expenditure to allow them to invest in new tech, especially if that will benefit animal welfare and the involvement of modern practices and technology in food production.

My hon. Friend went on to talk about bovine TB, of course. There is probably not enough time for me to get into that subject today, but what I will say is that we must use every tool in the box to fight bovine TB. That includes vaccinating badgers, it includes ensuring that we have improved biosecurity and it includes culling badgers where that is essential. We should be guided by the science and not by anything else—not by the calendar and not by political lobbying, but by the science. That is what the Government will do.

I think that, for the first time, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) managed to get to the right of my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset when he committed to shooting every fox in Northern Ireland. I wish him well in his pursuit—[Interruption.] I know it was tongue in cheek. He is a huge advocate for the farmers of Northern Ireland, and they are great food producers. He also mentioned the price of fertiliser and the challenges with fertiliser, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson), who talked about CF Fertilisers. Yesterday I met my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to see what we can do to co-operate and work together to assist CF in ensuring that we continue to supply the nation with ammonium nitrate, nitric acid and carbon dioxide, which of course is very important.

I know that I am running out of time, but I want to make a couple of comments about my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives, who talked about potato and dairy farmers leaving the sector and the importance of education. Education of our consumers is one area where we could criticise the agricultural sector. I do not think that we have done a very good job as farmers—I put my hand up as one of those farmers—of ensuring that our consumers understand how and where our food is produced. We have to do better to ensure that the next generation fully understands where and how our food is produced. Education was also mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra).

My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border talked about grant schemes, which I hope I have mentioned. He also mentioned the work of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is under the chairmanship of my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill). It continues to be a great critical friend of the Department, and I would encourage it to continue its great work.

My hon. Friend for Penrith and The Border also talked about the reward for—that is, payments for—hedgerows and so on. I hope that when we announce the new schemes, which I hope will be very soon, he will see the fruits of those discussions. I am very keen to ensure that farmers want to take part in the schemes and feel part of the solution. But money is not the only barrier. I think that we can help, assist with, and tweak some farming practices. Hedgerows are a good example. It is not just about money; it is about being able to get on to the land and cut the hedges at the right time. If we can fund and assist with wildlife strips by the side of the hedgerows, it is possible to cut a hedgerow in January and February without running on to the commercial crop. That has the added benefit of creating a wildlife corridor and leaving berries and so on the hedgerows for wild birds to feed on during that time.

I think I have run out of time—apart from for mentioning the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who gave us his rant about Brexit once again. We will have to come back to that on another occasion, but I enjoy the same loop of conversation we have with him every time.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Thank you, Minister. We now turn to Simon Jupp, who will have the final word.

Food and Farming: Devon and Cornwall

Gary Streeter Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

You might say that, Mr Betts; I couldn’t possibly comment. What I can say is that I agree with the hon. Gentleman: the commonality of interests between farmers in Devon and Northern Ireland is obvious and clear. Northern Ireland is an important part of the United Kingdom. It is important for farmers throughout our great country that these policies should be got right. Now is not the time to take unnecessary risks with our capacity to grow food and sustain the nation, but the time to seize the opportunities the moment brings.

[Sir Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

I very much agree with the thrust of my right hon. and learned Friend’s speech. On self-sufficiency and food security, currently the UK enjoys 64% self-sufficiency. The Government have no shortage of targets in other areas. Does he agree that it would be quite sensible to have a target to increase that figure to, say, 75% over the next decade? What is wrong with that?

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

I agree with every word of my hon. Friend’s intervention. Food security, as I will come on to say, should be at the heart of the Government’s policy making.

We cannot ignore the international context. What more does it take than tanks rolling across the border of a European nation—one that has been famous in history as the breadbasket of the world? Are we seriously going to assume that from now on the uninterrupted supply of food can simply be counted on? Or are the Government to start to take the precautions necessary to ensure that the food supply for the people of this country is guaranteed? One way to do that would be to adopt the measure proposed by my eminently wise neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Sir Gary Streeter).

Waste Industry: Criminality and Regulation

Gary Streeter Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I remind Members to observe social distancing.

Before I call Aaron Bell, I wish to make a short statement about the sub judice resolution. I have been advised that there are active legal proceedings between Mathew Richards and the Environment Agency. The Speaker has agreed to exercise the discretion given to the Chair in respect of the resolution on matters sub judice to allow full reference to those proceedings as they concern issues of national importance. I am aware that Members may wish to refer to criminal legal proceedings during the course of this debate to illustrate concerns relating to illegal waste activities. All Members should be mindful of those cases that remain contested or may be the subject of future legal proceedings and should refrain from making references to any active court cases. This is particularly so in respect of criminal matters where discussion of the cases is likely to be prejudicial to any forthcoming hearings or trials. The sub judice resolution has not been waived in relation to any live criminal cases connected to Walleys Quarry.

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[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on making such a strong case on behalf of his constituents who have been affected by this case. On a broader point, one of the challenges that the Environment Agency faces is being able to collect and collate the right information to bring an effective prosecution or take action against offenders. I can think of a similar case with different circumstances in my constituency, where there have been those kinds of challenges. What would he ask the Minister to do to support the Environment Agency in bringing together the right information in such cases to challenge them?

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions must be brief.

[Aaron Bell]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Clearly, the Environment Agency needs more powers. I have reassured my constituents that there is no financial pressure, but I am not convinced that more money would necessarily solve the severe cultural problem within the Environment Agency. It does not need more money if it is too weak to use it. I accept that it has perhaps been subject to the same legal threats as The Guardian, campaigners and myself, but, as a regulator, it must be stronger and act in the public interest. If funding is the problem, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs must address it.

Finally, I expected to come here to push for other policies, but I am pleased to note the recent significant consultations launched last month by DEFRA on the carriers, brokers and dealers regime and on developing a central digital waste tracking service, which would address concerns that there is no comprehensive way of tracking waste. I would like to briefly touch on other types of waste crime, but I will let others speak more about them. At the lowest level, something that is rife in everyone’s constituencies is fly-tipping. Recently in Newcastle-under-Lyme, there has been fly-tipping off Watermills Road in Chesterton, but I will leave that to my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson), who I understand wants to speak about that.

Another area is illegal waste dumps. I know that other hon. Members might want to pick up on that, but I must put on the record my concern about how these are being policed by the Environment Agency, too. For the past decade, constituents in the north-west of my constituency have had to suffer through an organised illegal waste dump at Doddlespool farm. Fleets of lorries have travelled from far afield to drop their loads of waste at the site to avoid paying the landfill tax. The lorries have blocked roads. There have been fires, rat infestations, and waste has spilled out, potentially contaminating watercourses and the food chain.

The EA took court action in 2017. The landowner was required to remove the waste or face further court action. He was also hit with a £6,100 court bill—again, inadequate—yet the waste has not been removed five years on. I cannot comment further on the present situation due to sub judice rules, but it is evident that the fine was not a serious enough punishment to make the landowner change his ways. I am conscious that I have taken a long time. In conclusion, we need to look thoroughly at the problems within the current regulatory regime and at the scale of criminality in the sector, and I look forward to the rest of the debate.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. Colleagues, nine people wish to speak and the wind-ups begin at 5.10 pm, so you have two and a half minutes each.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) on securing the debate. He has summed up the situation well.

I have been involved trying to expose this issue for the last 10 years, along with the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). Everyone knows what is going on. They know about the lack of regulation, the low threshold for getting into the industry and the involvement of organised crime. HMRC itself in its tax gap report recognises that some 22% of landfill tax is not being paid, although it actually put a profit warning on that. The Environment Agency knows not only what has been lost in tax revenues, but that the clean-up costs will fall on the taxpayer. Everyone knows that the matter involves organised crime. I have raised it for the last 10 years, and I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will allude to that as well. We have explained all this to the Government, but there seems to be inaction in respect of getting the agencies together.

The Environment Agency is not capable of addressing the matter. It may be good at cuddling newts and protecting forests, but it is not good at having an enforcement attitude. HMRC is frankly a disgrace, and I will give an example of why I say that. I got involved in the matter because of a company in the north-east called Niramax. I only had to look at the directors of the company to see something was wrong. Organised criminals—one of them is in prison for murder, and the police told me that his associates had convictions and were involved in a whole host of organised crime—suddenly got involved in waste management. They bought a landfill site in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden, which I know he will talk about, and one or two in the north-east. They then set out to undercut legitimate businesses. Talking to people in the waste industry, there is no way they could pick up that waste for the amounts they charged.

It ended up with Operation Nosedive, which HMRC instigated in 2014. HMRC raided the premises and claimed £78 million was to be reclaimed. That was suddenly halted in 2020. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden and I asked why it had been halted and we were told, “No, no. You can’t look into this because it is HMRC.” The National Audit Office has done a very good investigation that showed HMRC spent six years and £3.5 million of public money, but there were no convictions and there was no outcome.

Everyone knows what the problem is, but there has got to be action. I say to the Minister, I do not want more initiatives about fly-tipping and this, that and the other; I want co-ordinated action between the agencies that have the powers to crack down on this.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

You have two and a half minutes each, colleagues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this vital debate secured by my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell). He has made a strong and clear case for the need for more action to tackle the blight of criminal activity in the waste industry. This appalling activity is putting tens of thousands of lives at risk across the country.

In my constituency, I have been fighting for a lasting solution to one such waste crime, which had the potential to be a national disaster. Yet, as the site in question is being cleared, up and down the country unscrupulous criminals are filling warehouses or plots of land next to residential properties and littering our countryside with waste that presents a real threat to the health and safety of surrounding communities.

I wrote to the Prime Minister and multiple Departments last year to highlight the urgency of clearing a site that has been a significant risk in Stoke-on-Trent Central since 2014, and I am delighted that my campaign has resulted in clearing the Twyford House site of an excess of 30,000 tonnes of illegal and combustible commercial waste. I thank the Minister for her support in making that happen, so that the danger that has been there since 2014 can finally be removed.

My hon. Friend’s tireless work to tackle the environmental disaster at Walleys Quarry landfill is an example to us all. Although the quarry is in his constituency, the consequences of the activities at that site are suffered by my constituents too, and I have also been persistently raising their concerns with the Environment Agency and Ministers. The pace of progress to resolve the problem has been a frustration to us all. Does the Minister agree that there is a clear need for the separation of regulation and enforcement authorities?

The current approach to the regulation of more than 180,000 waste carriers, brokers and dealers is leading to record levels of crime, which may well spike later this year when the increased cost of red diesel will mean many looking to cut corners to make savings, for example through the use of exemptions codes. It is a sad fact that waste crime is more lucrative on the basis of risk-to-reward ratios than human trafficking or drug dealing.

This is not a victimless crime. Public health and public safety are dependent on stopping the serious waste industry criminals. We must have better regulation and tougher sentences.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

We can now go to three minutes each. I call Peter Gibson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Gullis]

I could not be more grateful to my hon. Friend. This is why we are a tour de force in north Staffordshire, walking around at every opportunity like some sort of north Staffordshire mafia, which I am proud to be a part of.

The company has also repeatedly breached its permit at the neighbouring site, where it does have permission to operate. Many incidents were reported at the site in 2021, including four in the run-up to Christmas. A site visit by the Environment Agency on 21 January 2022 found multiple breaches of permits, including the storage of too much hazardous waste on the site, as well as the storage of scrap metal, which the permit does not allow.

I am encouraged to have learned from the Environment Agency that it will carry out further inspections this week and has engaged with the company to get it to sort out its operation. The Environment Agency and Stoke-on-Trent City Council will also have a joint meeting on Thursday to discuss the problems at the site. I look forward to receiving an update early next week on the outcome of those investigations and the meeting.

When the people who run waste sites fail to keep them safe and manage them in a way that is inconsiderate to their neighbours, it has a huge impact on people’s physical and mental wellbeing, as well as the feel-good factor of a place that we proudly call home. We need to make sure that these companies can be properly controlled and brought to heel when they do wrong.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

I thank colleagues for their co-operation in keeping to time. We turn to speeches from the Front-Benchers; the first two have five minutes each.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again this afternoon, Sir Gary. I am very grateful to lead for the Opposition in this debate, and I would like to acknowledge the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) for calling it.

At the outset, I pay tribute to all the campaigners in north Staffordshire working to stop the stink at Walleys Quarry in Silverdale. I think of people such as Helen Vincent, Dr Michael Salt, Dr Scott at Silverdale Practice, Nat and Angela Wint, Graham Eagles and Steve Meakin, Councillor Amelia Rout and Councillor Sue Moffat. I also think of William Cross, Sian Rooney, Tom Currie, Lauren Currie, Dr Ian Sinha and, of course, Rebecca Currie and youth Matthew. Those people and many more, such as Adri and Colette Hartveld, want to be able to lead their lives, raise their families and breathe the air around them in safety.

I know from my visit to Silverdale and the discussions I have had with local residents how much stress, concern and fear is caused by the hydrogen sulphide emissions emitted from the site, as well as the effect that waste-related issues have on people’s lives. I want to acknowledge all the other campaigners who care and want change desperately.

I also acknowledge the tireless and passionate work of local councillors in that community. On my visit, I was joined by a number of councillors, including Andy Fox-Hewitt, Dave Jones, Gill Williams, John Williams and Adam Jogee, who works in my team. The issues there are real and harmful, and the Government need to act now. If the Minister will not take my word for it, I ask her to reflect on the fact that in just one week in June 2021, the Environment Agency received 1,207 complaints from residents across Silverdale, Clayton, Westlands and the wider Newcastle-under-Lyme area. That strength of feeling surely speaks for itself.

As pointed out by Commons Library staff in their helpful briefing ahead of this debate, the true scale of waste crime is difficult to quantify, but it is

“estimated that 18% of all waste is illegally managed, equating to approximately 34Mt (megatonnes). This is the equivalent of enough waste to fill Wembley Stadium 30 times.”

That is a shocking statistic and it must prompt the Government to act.

The impact of waste crime is widespread, with adverse effects on individuals, businesses, public services, the environment and the economy. Indeed, the Environment Agency’s 2021 report stated that waste crime costs the economy in England an estimated £1 billion a year—a 55% increase since its last estimate in 2015. The problem is real. I would be grateful if the Minister could update the House on the work of the joint unit for waste crime, which has been mentioned. It would be helpful to know the scale and frequency of engagement between agencies and with the devolved Administrations, the reach and scope of the unit’s current work, and any plans for the coming period.

Fly-tipping and illegal waste dumping blights communities across England, and this Government have to get a grip nationally and locally when it comes to ensuring that local government has the resources it needs to keep our communities green, clean and waste free—an ambition that many residents in Newcastle-under-Lyme want and deserve.

I am grateful to colleagues in both Houses of Parliament in recent weeks and months for raising waste-related issues through a range of written parliamentary questions, including my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), the noble Baroness Jones of Whitchurch in the other place, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who has spoken eloquently in today’s debate. Indeed, in June 2021 my right hon. Friend asked about

“the adequacy of the Environment Agency’s surveillance powers”.

In response, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) said that there had been no assessment of the adequacy of those powers. I ask the current Minister whether that remains the case. That is in addition to the questions asked of the Minister and DEFRA by Government Members.

It is clear from what is happening in communities such as Newcastle-under-Lyme that waste has a huge impact on the lives of many people across the country. In the last 10 days, the Government have set out two new consultations in relation to tackling crime. I wish those consultations well, but, more importantly, we want to see swift action. I would like the Minister to address in her closing remarks the approach to landfill and incineration, because we need an open and honest discussion about how we tackle waste, and we need to know where the Minister is on these issues. The scourge of waste crime across England is a task that we must all work together to address. I look forward to working with the Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme and all colleagues to address these issues, and to protect and clean these green and pleasant lands.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Will the Minister please leave two minutes for Mr Bell to have the final word? I call Jo Churchill.

COP26 and Air Pollution

Gary Streeter Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I remind Members that they are now expected to wear face coverings. That is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when leaving and entering the room. It is a great pleasure to call Mr Barry Sheerman to move the motion.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered COP26 and the impact of air pollution on public health and wellbeing.

Sir Gary, it is my pleasure, on this day of all days, to have secured this Westminster Hall debate: a day when the whole world’s attention is focused on COP26 in Glasgow, and there are signs—some mixed, but some good—of what is happening there. There has also been a petition, as you of course know, signed by more than 100,000 people, calling for an introduction of charges on carbon emissions to tackle the climate crisis and air pollution. Forgive me, Sir Gary, but I am currently suffering from a bad cold and a booster jab, so if my voice fails at any time, you will know the cause.

Air pollution kills 64,000 people in the UK every year, yet the Government provide annual fossil fuel subsidies of £10.5 billion, according to the European Commission. To meet UK climate targets, they must end this practice and introduce charges on producers of greenhouse gas emissions. Most Members of the House, and especially the Yorkshire Members, know of the Drax power station, which is currently producing energy from wood pellets, either produced in this country or imported from South America. For that purpose, it received a massive Government subsidy of £900 million last year.

I want to start at the beginning; I have always believed in borrowing from the United States declaration of independence, because I love the language. I used to be the head of a university’s American studies department —indeed, I taught the Deputy Speaker at one stage. I believe that there is an inalienable right for every person on this planet to be born, to live and to breathe fresh air. At the moment, that is not the case. How bad is it? Seven million people die prematurely across the world due to air pollution-related conditions, with 36,000 premature deaths in the UK alone, costing an estimated £12 billion.

Of course, with COP26, there is a risk of a great missed opportunity, as I believe there was last week in the Budget. If I were marking it as a university teacher, I would grudgingly give it a lower second. Why? Because I thought it was very technically competent, but it missed any true originality. That is the mark of a good essay: true originality. Originality is so important to everything that is produced. I could see the technical competence in last week’s Budget, but there was a lack of the imagination needed to say, “This is the time—with COP26 about to start in Glasgow, with all of us conscious that the planet is warming up and with the future of this fragile planet in danger—to tell the British people that we must act.”

In my experience as the longest-serving Member of Parliament on this side of the House—I was elected in 1979—the British public are intelligent and resilient, and have good common sense. We can persuade them that something terrible will happen if we do not act, and that we need extra money and taxation to so do. They are persuadable, as they have been persuadable before. They were persuadable after the ravages of the second world war. They picked themselves up and went through a period of higher taxation in order to get through. The economy grew, and so we grew out of many of our problems.

What was missing in the Budget was a Chancellor who said, “The situation is so precarious that I am introducing a number of taxes that will raise money to give us more practical ways to tackle global warming, here in our communities.” That is what was missing. That is what I want to speak about today.

Too much of the talk at the moment is global. Two or three of us here had the foresight to be the first people to invite young Greta Thunberg to come to the UK and talk to an all-party parliamentary group, and what a pleasure it was to hear her speak. However, many people think, “I cannot be Greta Thunberg; I cannot be an international statesperson; I am not the president of any country. I am just me, in my community.” We are failing to give people the ability to say, “I can help tackle this. I can roll up my sleeves and make a difference in my community,” even though it may not be something that is instantaneously registered on the global index.

Today, I want to talk about clean air, because all of us can do something about it in a practical way, and we can do it now. Let us review how bad things are. I have mentioned the cost in numbers of deaths, and I have mentioned that we need individual campaigns, yet we are still giving subsidies to companies that are polluting the atmosphere. Today, I am going to suggest some quick wins.

I want real engagement across every town and city throughout the country on a journey to sustainability based on the UN sustainable development goals. Colleagues might ask what I am doing about it as a Member of Parliament. Two years ago, we brought a group of business people to Huddersfield who joined with the university and local charities to form the Huddersfield sustainable town initiative.

My constituents really dislike it if I say we are an average British town, so I must say that we are a typical British town, which we are across almost every criterion. We are a microcosm of the United Kingdom: the percentage of people in manufacturing; the percentage of people in services; the level of education; the skills. We are a microcosm. My philosophy, which is shared by the members of the Huddersfield sustainable town initiative, is that if we can change Huddersfield into a sustainable town, there is no reason that every community in our country could not become a sustainable town. Why can we not spread from Huddersfield? We are already working with 37 towns. Why can we not have 500 towns and cities in this country work towards sustainability?

People say, “Why all that nonsense? Just get on with it. Why would you want the United Nations’ sustainable development goals?” Sir Gary, you know of my great interest in road safety. I have campaigned on it for many years: I organised for seatbelt legislation as a young MP, and in my only successful private Member’s Bill, I banned children from being carried without restraint in cars. I am now chair of the Global Network for Road Safety Legislators, a World Health Organisation committee, and because of that, I know that if we take a particular subject—even safety in a community—and put it in the context of the sustainable development goals, we transform the potential of what we are doing. The great thing about those goals is that they are rigorous. I have been involved in environmental campaigns all my life with other colleagues, and those campaigns have done really good work across many areas, but too many of them are discrete initiatives: recycling, reuse, cleaning up rivers and streams, and that sort of thing. If we have the rigour provided by the sustainable development goals, and we start off our whole sustainable development programme by consulting local people with a questionnaire asking which ones they want to prioritise, we take a real step towards engaging the local community. That is what we have done in my own community.

One of the things that we are targeting in Huddersfield is clean air. How do we stop filthy fumes from going into the air, in our case from an ancient energy from waste facility? I am not against energy from waste if it is high quality, but we have an old facility, and it does not create heat that is used to heat homes. That heat is not used in the correct way: much of it goes into the atmosphere, which is very damaging indeed, so we must first make sure that every sustainable town, city and community rigorously meets those sustainable development goals. The goals give communities that rigour: they will say, “We’ve got to this stage—yes!” but to get to the next stage and get the accreditation, they have to go one step further.

We all know that transport is critical to those sustainable development goals. Many believe that transport is responsible for 40% of the emissions we breathe in this country, polluting London and cities across the country with noxious emissions. Some great friends of mine who are Members of Parliament for Lewisham and are active there know as well as I do—because of the work we have done in the all-party parliamentary group on air pollution—about Ella Kissi-Debrah, who passed away. Her mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, who I have met, had the insight and inspiration to get in touch with Sir Stephen Holgate, one of the leading professors and medical experts on clean air and its link to health and wellbeing, who works at the University of Southampton. He gave evidence at the inquest, and he got its verdict changed, because that little girl’s death was related to asthma but it was caused by the filthy pollution that she was breathing in, in a community that is just a stone’s throw from here.

All over London, we have schools; we have children; we have pregnant women; and we have elderly people. I particularly woke up during the first lecture that Sir Stephen gave to our APPG, when he said, “This is not just about NOx: it is the platelets on the NOx that cause the real damage to human health. Those platelets not only poison people and make them very ill indeed, but accelerate the aging process.” At my age, I sat up in my chair immediately thinking, “Yes!” However, that is only a lighter aside. The fact of the matter is that the air we are breathing in this country, in places where we might have thought we were guaranteed clean air, is not clean.

We have brought together a group of people in the Westminster Commission on Road Air Quality to try to do the research properly. We have an air health working party, a working party on air monitoring and a working party on education. Last week we heard from the experts on inside air, who said that where they have done audits inside schools—not just in the playground, not right by the polluting road that passes the primary school but in the classroom—the air is poisonous to breathe. If that is the case, it is time to take action, and take action we must. It also gives the opportunity for everyone to take action at the grassroots and to do it quicker rather than slower.

Yes, we all believe that we should move as fast as possible to electric vehicles, but all the research that I have been immersed in in my role suggests to me that the more we look at what is happening with electric cars, many of us believe that electric will be overtaken by hydrogen power. There is more and more evidence, in fact. Research is interesting because, with heavy goods vehicles carrying big loads, batteries are hard to use. In hilly areas, they do not have the ability to cope. Much of the research has been with HGVs, and the research that I have been privy to shows that already many HGVs are being produced to use hydrogen power. If that is true for big vehicles, it will come to small vehicles soon.

Of course, we must improve the vehicles on the road, but there are quicker things to do, too. We know that there are ways of adulterating—in the best way—the diesel that is put into commercial vehicles with vegetable extracts that make it much less polluting. Indeed, one of the people who has been educating me about that is William Tebbit, son of Norman Tebbit, who many of us remember very fondly. So this is not pie in the sky or wait a long time; this is stuff that we can do now, changing the fuel we are putting in heavy goods vehicles.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Barry, to give others a chance, perhaps you would take just a couple more minutes.

[Mr Sheerman]

I am just coming to the end.

Another practical issue is, how many people realise that, at the moment, nothing in the MOT test tests how polluting someone’s vehicle is? There is nothing in the test about what comes out of the back end of a car. If the recommendations that have been brought forward could be acted on now, we could transform the quality of the vehicles on our roads. Someone gave me this information recently: if we take out the particulate emissions filter in a vehicle, or it does not work properly, that one vehicle produces the equivalent of a traffic jam between Westminster and Huddersfield. That is frightening, is it not?

We have many practical ways to change the air in our country and move towards a clean air environment. I believe that this is the secret to opening people to getting involved in the environment, to accepting—perhaps—higher taxes in order to stimulate that move, and all round, to moving towards more sustainable and greater health and wellbeing for our country. I recommend this big change in our country; let us do it now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Colleagues, there are five who wish to speak in this 60-minute debate, with about four minutes each. Wind-up speeches will begin at 5.10 pm.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell]

I made that point in the debate on the Budget, and I do not want to be repetitious. The issue for me is that any tax relief or tax reduction that either promotes further emissions or supports those polluting our environment is clearly contrary to Government policy, as far as I can see. On that basis, I hope that, as a result of COP, in the next few weeks or perhaps months the Government will firmly come down as opposed to further Heathrow expansion.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

I call Peter Dowd, who has until 5.10 pm.

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

Thank you, Sir Gary. It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship.

On COP, air quality and the impact on health and wellbeing, we have to drill down to the specifics. We can talk at a national, international or regional level, but it always comes down, in effect, to what is happening in local communities, with the cumulative effect in them. My local community, like those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and other hon. Friends, is no different.

My area has a huge dock in it. The Liverpool docks are based in my constituency, and we have thousands of lorries coming down the road, the A5036, all the time—daily, of a night, at weekends. They are great pollutants, as are local cars and local transport. The council has had five monitoring stations in the area, and a sixth up and running, and since covid those levels have been dramatically down. That should teach us a lesson, which is that we have to get vehicles, whether they be lorries or cars, off the road.

I am really disappointed, notwithstanding COP and notwithstanding covid, that National Highways—it used to be Highways England, which used to be the Highways Agency, and I think it changes its name so we can never keep up with what it is at and hold it to account—persists with this old-fashioned view, which must be 20 years out of date, that if there is a problem with a road, the solution is to build another one. That is exactly what it is proposing in my constituency. It is proposing to build a £250 million road through Rimrose valley. Rimrose Valley Friends has done a great job opposing it, but there will be a £250 million road through the only green part of my constituency. It is possible to walk from one end of the constituency to the other in about 35 or 40 minutes, and the same in the other direction, so it is incredibly tight. Within it there is this lung, Rimrose valley, and what does the Highways Agency or Highways England or whatever it is called nowadays—National Highways—do? It is going to put a road through it, and that is not acceptable.

I ask the Minister to go back and speak to her colleagues and get that process halted—put a stop to it—pending the lessons learned from covid and pending COP. Departments and agencies pushing on with the same old hackneyed solutions will not be a resolution for any of us. The local authority is trying to do what it can, but it can only do so much. We have money for an air quality grant, which is helping us to educate, and we are working collaboratively as much as the local authority can, but it is not much. We need national action, and we need the Department to get a grip of National Highways and to call a halt to this programme. It should discuss it with local people, discuss it with the port and discuss it with all interested parties, and just stop this madness continuing, because it is not acceptable.

I will make a final point, if I may. We have that going on, but we have the docks—a major, massive dock—and they are only going to expand because there will be more containers coming in through the north, as another alternative, because of covid. What I want to do is to work collaboratively with everybody to stop the road being built. Let us rethink the issue. Because we are in a port area, we have scrapyards, but for the third or fourth time in the last few years we have had massive fires that are adding to the problem. It is not just about cars and lorries, but about all the other associated things. Let us get a grip of this, let us do better enforcement and let us stop the cheating on emissions. Let us get to grips with this issue, stop that road going through and work with our communities to sort out the problem.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Thank you, colleagues, for your co-operation. We now come to the Front-Bench speeches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

I call the Minister, Jo Churchill, to respond. Could she kindly leave one minute for Mr Sheerman to wind up at the end?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jo Churchill]

No. I am really sorry, but I have only one minute left. The Bill introduces new powers to compel vehicle manufacturers to recall vehicles and non-road mobile machinery if they are found not to meet the environmental standards that they were approved to meet—I think that answers a question that was raised earlier. It will enable the Government to compel manufacturers to recall vehicles and non-road mobile machinery for failures in their emission control.

New legislation came into force across England earlier this year to reduce PM 2.5 pollution by phasing out the burning of small volumes of wet wood and the sale of all house coal. However, some residents still rely on coal fires, so we have to work our way through those challenges.

The Government allocated £880 million to tackle nitrogen dioxide exceedances under the 2017 air quality plan for nitrogen dioxide. This year, the first clean air zones were introduced in Bath and Birmingham, which deliver targeted action to improve air quality and health and to support economic growth.

We are working hard to provide citizens with the information they need to protect themselves. I also have a Breathe Easy group. Those groups do great work, but we have to make sure that we work with experts so that we can get really timely information to people such as, “If air pollution is low, carry on as usual. If it is high, and you have asthma, avoid vigorous activity”. To do that, we need to do the monitoring that we are now scaling up, so that we have a good alert system to help protect people. That system was revamped in 2019.

There is just about a minute left. There is plenty more that we are doing and that we will carry on doing. We have different biomass anaerobic digestion issues and, as my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) said, we have to make sure that policies do not fall against each other.

In conclusion, taken together, this is a comprehensive package. However, we have to do more by seizing opportunities and addressing risks. We need to take action to tackle climate change and air pollution. We are committed to cleaning up our air and carrying on our work.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Mr Sheerman has the final word.

[Mr Sheerman]

It has been a very good debate, as it always is with you in the Chair, Sir Gary. The fact of the matter is that we do not want too little, too late. We want it now. Children are being poisoned; 3 million children in our own country are being poisoned by fumes mainly coming from air pollution from roads. We have some short-term things. Yes, we need international and global leadership at COP26, but we need local empowerment and we need it now.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gary Streeter Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

The hon. Lady raises a very serious issue, and indeed the Department is taking it very seriously. In fairness, as I said, water companies already spend £1.1 billion to improve their monitoring and discharging, but we have set up the taskforce to hold their feet to the fire to come up with some measures for how we can set this long-term goal of getting rid of these sewage outlets once and for all. They will be doing more real-time data checking, so we will have the relevant data that we need soon, and they will be installing more monitoring devices, but the taskforce will report back in the spring on further actions that we may be able to work on.

[Sir Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

What discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on ensuring that fish products imported from the EU are subject to the same standards and requirements as fish products exported to the EU.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

I regularly have discussions with Cabinet colleagues on this issue, in particular through the Cabinet Sub-Committee dealing with EU exit. Import controls on fish products are being introduced in stages. Imports of most fish products have required illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing documentation since January. That includes a catch certificate. We plan to introduce documentary checks for export health on imported fish from April and some physical checks from July.

[Sir Gary Streeter [V]]

I thank my right hon. Friend for all the efforts he is making to iron out the wrinkles in the export of fish products from the UK. However, if these problems persist, why do we not serve notice on our friends in the EU that with immediate effect we intend to treat the import of fish products from EU countries in precisely the same way that our fish exports to EU countries, especially France, are currently being treated—regulatory equivalence? Would that not help to bring people to the table to resolve the current disruption being suffered by our fishing industry?

[George Eustice]

As I said to the Chair of the Select Committee earlier, when we start to introduce those checks they will indeed be equivalent and similar to the types of checks that the European Union is currently requiring on our own fish exports. At that point, I hope there will be an opportunity for some discussion about how we can each ensure that we have the right safeguards for our respective markets in a way that is more user-friendly and more pragmatic. There are countries in the world that have better and more developed systems for doing this documentation than the European Union.