High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill: Select Committee

Debate between Joan Walley and Caroline Spelman

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

The contrast between yesterday and today is huge. Yesterday the Chamber was packed, there was a five-minute limit on speeches and we had no real opportunity to say what we had come here to say, whereas today we are considering the detailed instructions that we shall give to the new Select Committee. Yesterday I, at least, talked about the failure to organise a strategic environmental assessment of the Bill, whereas today we are considering the detailed aspects, and carrying out the equivalent of an environmental impact assessment. What Parliament does today will be very important, and I hope the Government will respond to the debate in a much more relaxed way.

My amendment gives me an opportunity to flag up issues relating to how HS2 Ltd will ensure that some of the worst environmental effects are mitigated. I see that the Minister is nodding. It is essential that we have robust procedures that Ministers and HS2 Ltd will follow, but given that—as was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson)—it seems impossible for anyone entirely to understand the strange creature that is a hybrid Bill, we should establish how it will work and what the role of the Select Committee will be.

The purpose of my amendment is to establish how we will deal with the environmental consequences of the Bill. It is not intended to be a wrecking amendment. My aim is to challenge the Government—and, for that matter, Opposition Front Benchers—regarding measures to mitigate the effects and to provide compensation. I should make it clear that mitigation and compensation are two very separate things. The Government must also be accountable to themselves, if not to the House, given that they set themselves up as the “greenest Government ever”. Again, the Minister nods, but to what extent is that put into practice?

The right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), who is a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, has done tremendous work on natural capital, both in the Committee and in the natural environment White Paper. She has spoken of a huge ambition for the Government: the achievement not just of no net loss of biodiversity, but, where appropriate, biodiversity gain. The Bill needs to reflect that.

[Mrs Spelman]

In fact, the HS2 project will be the first and largest of the major infrastructure projects to which the relatively new concept of biodiversity offsetting will need to be applied. DEFRA has consulted on biodiversity offsetting, but we should not miss the opportunity to do something really good and significant in regenerating degraded parts of the environment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joan Walley]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right, and she did a great deal to advance exactly that thinking when she was Secretary of State at DEFRA. This project involves the biggest infrastructure investment that our generation is likely to see, and I do not think it is too much to expect that the environmental aspects be given equal importance to the transport infrastructure and investment ambitions.

It is not only the work that came out of DEFRA that is important; so is the work the Government did on the national planning policy framework. That set out clearly not just that there should be no net loss in biodiversity, but that there should be—although I accept with some qualification—where possible, a net gain. My amendment seeks to explore how that objective, which I think we share on both sides of the House—that was certainly the case with the Climate Change Act—can be put into practice as we go forward on the HS2 journey we are now all embarked upon. That issue has not been given sufficient attention so far, and perhaps the Minister can set out today how the concerns reflected in my amendment can and will be addressed. To do that, he must also address the detailed recommendations in the 13th report of the Environmental Audit Committee.

I want to go on a bit of a detour, if I may, because I think this issue is important. I was a Member of the last Parliament, when we had the Wright reforms, which looked at ways in which Parliament as well as Government could be more accountable. We are always looking at the role of Parliament and how people outside see us, and that is about not just what happens at Prime Minister’s Question Time, but the sort of detailed discussions we are having now. The Wright reforms set out that Select Committees should have a greater input into policy making and that Parliament itself should have a greater role, and that was in part about Select Committees having greater input into legislation. I very much support the Liaison Committee proposal that, where Select Committees have, on the all-party basis that we operate under, looked authoritatively at a matter in detail, and having taken expert evidence, they should be able to play a procedural part in the legislation in question going forward. I greatly regret the fact that the Government have not so far accepted the Liaison Committee’s recommendations.

All Select Committees have to report on how well we are scrutinising legislation. The Environmental Audit Committee produced a report entitled “HS2 and the environment” at great speed. We took a huge amount of evidence, including from Ministers, non-governmental organisations and HS2, and we came up with what we believe is an authoritative set of recommendations. For example, if what the Government and HS2 are doing does not match up with the work of the Select Committee to be appointed today by Parliament, the danger is that we will not cover to the necessary extent the environmental concerns we set out in our report. That is why our report made those recommendations, and I am happy that members of our Committee have added their names to the amendment.

Paragraph 86 of our report states the Government should

“not overly constrain the ‘principles’ of the Bill approved at Second Reading”,

and that, through the motion, we should do what can be done to

“avoid, reduce or remedy environmental damage”

through the environmental impact assessment process, or look at

“potential modifications to the route and its infrastructure and consequential environmental protections that might result”.

The real issue is that today we are appointing the new Select Committee and establishing its remit, but we have not yet had the Government’s response to the Environmental Audit Committee report. I understand that the Government will say, “Well, actually we have already taken account of such concerns.” If they are going to quote Standing Order 27A which requires an environmental statement, and Standing Order 224A, which requires an independent assessor to produce a report on the consultation on the environmental statement, that will not address the question of how the new Select Committee should consider the environmental issues. What instructions will there be? How narrow or wide will the Committee’s brief be?

I believe that the Standing Orders I have just referred to came about as a result of the Crossrail Bill, although I am sure other Members will have far more information on that issue than I do. As far as I can see, the Government’s advice relates just to Second Reading, so in effect, the role that arises from the instructions in these two Standing Orders applies only up to Second Reading, and not to what subsequently takes place, which includes the new Select Committee.

[Mrs Spelman]

To support the hon. Lady’s point, the significance of a hybrid Bill is that it incorporates the planning process into the legislative process, which strengthens the democratic element of the way we go about this. Therefore, it is completely in keeping with the logic of the recommendations of the Environmental Audit Committee that we should be giving the communities that stand to lose biodiversity a greater say in how we offset that biodiversity loss. They would have an opportunity to do that if the Select Committee proposed in the motion were able to adopt the recommendations of the Environmental Audit Committee.

[Joan Walley]

Once again the right hon. Lady is absolutely right and I value the work she does on the Environmental Audit Committee. When the Government have the report of the Select Committee that has been appointed today, they will bring forward environmental proposals on Third Reading. There is ample time for the Government to take account of how we can have something in place that makes up for the lack of strategic environmental assessment—we have not had that—and which could still look at the detail of the environmental impact assessments that we need. In the evidence that we received from many NGOs—from the wildlife trusts, the WWF and a host of other organisations—they all said how much they wanted to work in collaboration to find ways of having the mitigation that is needed, and also to look at implementing offsetting in ways that could be truly transformational. There are all kinds of implications for the detail of the engineering works on the route as well. If there is no way for all that to be brought together and taken on board, I think Parliament will be accused of having total disregard for the environmental aspects that should have been included and still need to be.

Finally, I want to refer to the Supreme Court. It made it clear that it is for Parliament, not the Government, to decide the parliamentary procedure for the hybrid Bill, and therefore for Parliament to decide what is reasonable and practicable when it comes to environmental protection, mitigation and compensation measures. It is entirely appropriate that the Select Committee should have the instruction to ensure that it is able properly to consider environmental issues and not leave what is “reasonable and practicable” to HS2 to decide, which in my book would be likely to mean a much lower level of environmental protection being applied than is required.

The cost of such environmental protections is a necessary cost if such a scheme is to go ahead. We heard about the huge ambition of HS2. That ambition needs to be equalled by environmental ambition. We should be doing everything to avoid impacts first, before we mitigate or compensate for them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Joan Walley and Caroline Spelman

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

It is important that all DEFRA’s publications are laid before the House; we go to great lengths to keep the House informed of all our activities. The waste review is, as the hon. Gentleman says, a landmark publication, and we look forward to publishing it shortly. We will make it widely available to hon. Members.

[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

In view of the forthcoming European Commission conference on the LIFE+ programme to protect biodiversity, will the Secretary of State give me an assurance that officials in the Environment Agency and Natural England will work right across the UK to make sure that we can get the maximum funding from that programme, particularly for the proposal that I am working on in Stoke-on-Trent to improve access to natural resources and to keep biodiversity?

[Mrs Spelman]

I share the hon. Lady’s passion for the protection of biodiversity and the enhancement of biodiversity where there has been biodiversity loss. I am sure that every sinew will be strained by every member of the DEFRA family to make sure that the United Kingdom does well out of any resources that are being made available through the European Union so that we can benefit by putting those resources where they will make a difference—with the protection of biodiversity.

Forestry (England)

Debate between Joan Walley and Caroline Spelman

Thursday 17th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. The public forest estate accounts for 18% of woodland cover in this country, so the vast majority of forest and woodland is in private ownership, and part of the point of moving to a fresh approach with an independent panel and widening the range of questions under consideration is to look at forestry policy and woodland policy in general.

[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s climbdown on behalf of the constituents who have expressed anger and disbelief to me about what is happening, but given both that the Government have said this is meant to be the greenest Government ever and that they have got rid of the Sustainable Development Commission, is it not about time that what has happened to this policy does not happen in all the other areas of biodiversity? Is it not time that the Government set out how they are going to embed sustainable development in all future policy in both urban and rural areas?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Joan Walley and Caroline Spelman

Thursday 4th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

Given the reference made to the Environmental Audit Committee, I hope we can return to the issue of resources in due course. On a constituency matter, I met the Staffordshire wildlife trust last week and it is looking to make a submission to the EU LIFE+ programme to enhance biodiversity in Stoke-on-Trent. Will the Secretary of State commit DEFRA officers to give support to any proposal that comes out of that?

[Mrs Spelman]

I am delighted to be able to offer that support. The wildlife trusts do an excellent job, which is why we see great scope in the concept of the big society for more work of this kind.

I might have made an error, Mr Speaker, in not responding myself to the question put by the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy). I apologise, as I should have taken it—but, of course, I agree with everything that the Minister of State had to say.