Antimicrobial Resistance: Farm Animals

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) and congratulate him on calling the debate.

The Government recognise antimicrobial resistance or AMR as a policy issue of huge importance and public interest. It is right and proper that there is scrutiny of the matters we have discussed today. Antimicrobial resistance is one of the greatest public health threats that we face. A landmark study published last year, the Global Research of Antimicrobial Resistance report, reported that more than 1 million human deaths worldwide could be directly attributed to antibiotic resistance in 2019. That was the lower estimate. The report indicated that the figure could be as high as 5 million deaths globally, as the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall indicated in his speech.

Antibiotics are the cornerstone of human medicine. Without them, things we take for granted, such as routine surgery, would become life-threatening. Bacteria cause disease in animals, too, and veterinary medicine, like human medicine, needs to be able to rely on access to antibiotics that work. Not only do animal health and welfare depend on it, so in turn do the food systems that we depend on. It is vital that we protect those medicines for future generations.

To start, I would like to talk about how the Government are tackling antimicrobial resistance and what the UK strategy is. We know that AMR will not be an easy problem to overcome. In 2019, we put in place long-term plans to address AMR and published our UK 20-year vision to contain and control AMR by 2040. That strategic vision is supported by our current five-year national action plan for AMR, which runs from 2019 to 2024. That plan is progressing well, and I will come shortly to some of its highlights.

Meanwhile, we are already developing the next five-year national action plan. Both the vision and the national action plan were developed across Government Departments and their agencies along with the Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, supported by a range of stakeholders. Our 20-year vision lays out the UK’s ambitions to create a world where AMR is contained, controlled and mitigated. In it, we have outlined our ambitions for lowering the burden of infections, our plans to optimise the use of antimicrobials across all sectors, and our aims to support the development of new therapies, diagnostics, vaccines and interventions.

We are taking a local, national and global approach. We are tackling AMR in people, animals, food and the environment, which is the One Health approach. The UK’s five-year national action plan takes those ambitions and breaks them down into actions for the UK over the short term. One key ambition of the national action plan is to reduce the use of antibiotics in the UK farming sector.

Let us talk about reducing use in animals. In the UK, the livestock industry is responsible for the health and welfare of more than 1 billion farmed animals in its care each year and for the production of safe, high-quality food. Across the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, we have been working collaboratively for many years with the veterinary and livestock sectors to promote responsible antibiotic use. UK agriculture has undergone a transformation over the last few years, as livestock sectors have embedded the principles of responsible antimicrobial use in their farming practices. That transformation has led to a clear understanding from all stakeholders of the importance of preserving antimicrobial efficiency and the responsibility that we all have to protect those essential medicines.

Due to the strong working relationship that we have with our vets and farmers, the UK has taken a different approach to other countries in reducing the use of antibiotics in animals, one that has been praised globally. We have engaged with the different sectors and collectively driven a culture change of responsible antibiotic use within food-producing animals. That has led to a 55% decrease in use since 2014, making the UK one of the lowest users of veterinary antibiotics across Europe. In particular, RUMA is establishing and chairing a targets taskforce for vets and farmers. It was pivotal in the industry taking ownership and driving forward that change.

Those industries have worked to protect antibiotics that are important for human use, reducing the use of those critical medicines in animals by 83% since 2014. Of course, the purpose of reducing antibiotic use is to reduce bacterial resistance to antibiotics. At the same time as reducing use, we have been monitoring antibiotic-resistant trends in bacteria in healthy livestock since 2015.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

This is an issue that I have followed for quite some time, and I would like to pin the Minister down on it. Does he think that there is a problem with the routine overuse of antibiotics in farming? Does he think that current levels need to come down significantly, and does he think that it is in any way connected with industrialised factory farming?

[Mark Spencer]

We should be absolutely clear that the reduction in antibiotic use has been demonstrated. There has been huge engagement with the sector.

[Kerry McCarthy]

But is it still too high?

[Mark Spencer]

Of course, we could always reduce it further. But at the same time, we have to balance that with animal welfare and ensuring that no animal is affected detrimentally. No farmer in this country can administer antibiotics to an animal without a veterinary prescription. It requires a professional vet to prescribe that medicine for an animal. I have huge confidence in our veterinary service, and their professionalism and ability to make those decisions.

[Mark Spencer]

I do not like blanket, overarching rules. There may well be a circumstance where a flock of birds or a group of animals are suffering from an infection and need to be treated. To rule out the use of group therapy when there is a group of animals that need veterinary intervention would be very silly. Of course, we want to ensure we target medicines at poorly animals, and that we use antibiotics to treat those animals. But to have a block rule where we rule out the use of a medicine to a group of animals that are suffering from an infection would be silly.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The Minister seems to be saying that vets issue prescriptions only when there is a proven need to deal with an infection or disease outbreak. However, we know prescriptions have been issued to prevent disease outbreaks. Does he not think that is a problem? It goes back to the issue of routine use as a preventative measure rather than to treat disease. The Minister seems to be saying that prescriptions are not issued for that purpose, but I am pretty sure that they are.

[Mark Spencer]

I did not say that. To be clear, what I said was that I trust the professional reputation and professionalism of our veterinary services, and that where a veterinary officer is concerned that an animal may well become infected in the near future, it seems reasonable that they could come to a professional decision that that animal is better off receiving preventative medicine to stop it becoming infected and to keep it healthy. We rely on the professionalism of our veterinary service, which is one of the best in the world.

The UK’s success to date has been achieved without specific legislation. However, we are in the process of updating our laws regulating veterinary medicines and that gives us an opportunity to embed into law some of the excellent core principles of antimicrobial stewardship, which vets and famers are already promoting through a culture of responsible use.

To support the progress made in recent years and to lay the foundation for ongoing reductions in the unnecessary use of antibiotics in animals, we are seeking to strengthen our national law in this area. We will soon be publishing a consultation on the Veterinary Medicines Directorate’s proposed changes to the Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013. The consultation will include proposals to stop the use of antibiotics to prevent disease in animals in all but exceptional cases, where the risks to animal health are high and the consequences likely to be severe, which was the point I made to the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy).

Our proposals bear similarities to recently updated EU legislation on veterinary medicines. However, our proposals also take into consideration the fact that we use significantly lower levels of antibiotics than most other European countries. We have already developed a culture of responsible use across the veterinary and livestock sectors. We will keep working with the farming sector to prevent animal diseases through vaccination, biosecurity and good husbandry, and through that we will further reduce unnecessary antibiotic use and underpin the availability of safe and sustainable food.

It is worth putting on record that when we compare ourselves with our European colleagues, we have a much lower use of antibiotics. We have lower use than France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Romania, Croatia, Greece, Malta, Bulgaria, Portugal—I can keep going with a whole list of countries where we are performing better than our European colleagues—but that does not mean that we cannot continue to push in the right direction.

AMR is not just a UK issue, but a global problem. The UK is a strong voice on the international stage as an engaged global partner on AMR. We have led the way for many years. In 2016, the global-facing independent AMR review, chaired by Lord O’Neill, catalysed a wave of political and public momentum to address the issue.

Recently, in 2021, under the UK’s G7 presidency, we made commitments to better understand supply chains and improve resilience, investigate market incentives and novel valuation strategies for antimicrobials, and adopt standards for manufacturing of antimicrobials to reduce environmental pollution. The UK played a significant role in updating the international guidance to the Codex standards on AMR. Those standards ensure that food is safely traded across the world. We must tackle the threat head-on and galvanise countries across the globe to do the same. AMR is not only has a monumental health impact, but harms our economies and global security.

To conclude, the human population is predicted to reach 9.8 billion by 2050 and livestock products play an important role in feeding the world’s population. The goal must be to produce food in the most sustainable way, minimising environmental impacts while respecting animal welfare. Food systems will need to adapt and take account of the need to reduce disease pressures and the need for antibiotics. Preventing animal disease through vaccination, improved biosecurity and good husbandry will increase the availability of safe and sustainable food.

The UK’s sectoral approach successfully harnessed the power of the livestock industry to set its own targets and address the challenge of the food system as a whole. Producers’ deeper understanding of their own sectors will enable them to plan more effectively for the future and consider how they can produce food in the most sustainable way.

In the UK, we have shown that by having shared Government and industry goals we reduce the use of antibiotics. Real, sustainable change can be delivered and I am confident that our new legislation will further empower farmers and vets to continue to work together.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to those people who are working on avian flu, including the chief vet, who was recognised in the new year’s honours list. I can assure my hon. Friend that we continue to talk to, and work with, industry to make sure that farmers can be profitable and confident that their business will succeed next year.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

There have been reports this week that the UK might be about to adopt ludicrous proposals that were, quite rightly, rejected by the EU to ban producers of plant-based products from using terms that are traditionally associated with meat and dairy. I do not think that anyone buying a hot dog actually thinks that it has canine content. Does the Minister think that the British public is so stupid to think that a product called “oat milk” comes from a cow?

[Dr Coffey]

My advice is not to believe everything that we read in the papers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Trudy Harrison]

Clearly, when statutory consultees do not respond promptly, it causes delays and deeper problems for developers and communities. I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend and esteemed colleague to discuss what went wrong with Brocks Pine, but I would say that Natural England are making significant progress across a number of measures, from countryside stewardship scheme agreements to the coastal path, national nature reserves and many others. There will be creases to iron out, and I will discuss those when I meet him.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Yesterday I met the chair of Natural England, which is doing excellent work. Will the Minister say a bit more about what she sees as Natural England’s role in nature-based solutions to tackle climate change?

[Trudy Harrison]

Natural England is a vital organisation that I work with closely to ensure that we meet our environmental targets set out in the world-leading Environment Act 2021. Whether it is working with farmers, local communities or environmental organisations, Natural England is at the heart of everything we are doing.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Following consultations on the two schemes my hon. Friend mentions, intensive work is going on in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to make all the schemes link up, because these are complicated issues. I can assure him that we are aiming to publish our responses to the outstanding consultations by the end of this year.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

T4. Under the previous Prime Minister, it was reported that the best and most versatile land would be re-categorised to include category 3b, with a view to blocking development, including solar power, from that land. Is that still the Government’s intention?

[Dr Coffey]

It is really important that we make the best use of our land, to have the food security that was referred to earlier. It is also important, when considering land use, that we think about the best place to put renewable energy. By and large, I think most people in this country would agree: let us have good agricultural land for farming, and let us use our brownfield sites for other energy projects too.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 31st October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner]

My right hon. Friend, as always, speaks good sense. He is absolutely right; with focus and a proper attempt to meet the challenges we face, it is remarkable what can be done. But this needs leadership and, as ever, it is missing.

Let me turn in detail to the public interest test and our amendment 3. The potential benefits of gene edited crops include creating plants resistant to extreme weather conditions and diseases, which could reduce the need for pesticides and create higher yields to address rising food insecurity driven by climate change and other factors. Genetic editing could also be used to improve the nutritional quality of food. For example, giving farmers the tools to beat virus yellows without recourse to neonicotinoids is a prize worth having.

However, we must recognise that any new technology also carries risks: risks of unintended consequences; risks of technology being misused; and risks of commercial pressure being exerted in ways that might not be for the benefit of the wider public. Those are all risks that must be properly recognised and addressed, because unless public and investor confidence is maintained, research will stall and opportunities will be squandered. Unfortunately, the Government’s blind faith in the market means this is a laissez-faire, minimalist Bill, which does not come close to an effective regulatory framework to guide and oversee the work of researchers and developers.

Amendment 3 would therefore require that a gene edited organism has been developed to provide one or more of the public benefit purposes listed, if it is to be released into the environment. The amendment neatly recycles much of the wording in section 1 of the Government’s own Agriculture Act 2020, which lists the public goods that can be funded. We are simply applying the same approach to the development and use of gene editing technologies. We believe they should be used only where that is clearly in the public interest, including, for instance, in protecting a healthy, resilient and biodiverse natural environment; mitigating climate change; improving the health or welfare of animals or plants; and supporting human health and wellbeing.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

During the Bill Committee, we heard that one of the potential benefits of these innovations was a possible reduction in the overuse of antibiotics on farms, because we would be able to breed things that are more resistant to disease. Although I welcome that, does my hon. Friend share my concern about the comments on antibiotics made by the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), when she was briefly Health Secretary? Is he concerned about her seemingly relaxed attitude towards these entering the food chain and the impact on public health?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. She is absolutely right; people should not be careless about antibiotics and that was not an approach to be encouraged at all. I share her concerns.

Amendment 3 would strengthen the Bill by harnessing the good that can be created through such technologies and ensuring that they are not developed and used for purposes that would not deliver beneficial outcomes—surely that is an objective we can agree on across the House. We believe that would take the Bill much further forward in establishing the kind of regulatory framework that really would place the UK in a leading position. That sits alongside our new clauses, which would establish a single, robustly independent regulator, along the lines of the very successful and genuinely world-leading Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. That regulator does not just approve an application, but tracks, traces and checks over time. That is an important and very different approach, and one discussed in Committee by expert witnesses.

Our new clauses would ensure that Ministers’ decisions on gene editing are properly guided by the environmental principles set out under the Environment Act 2021, and that there is no regression from the environmental standards agreed in the trade and co-operation agreement, which is pretty important when it comes to trade issues. Our new clauses would build an environment in which the UK really could attract the worldwide talent and investment in gene editing research and development that we all want to see.

On animal health and welfare, I turn to our amendment 4, which I am delighted to see has been endorsed by Compassion in World Farming and 12 other animal protection organisations, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation. The amendment would require a range of animal health and welfare factors to be taken into account by the Secretary of State when deciding whether to issue a marketing authorisation for a gene edited animal. We appreciate that gene editing can be used in the same way as “traditional” selective breeding to produce fast growth, high yields and large litters, which, sadly, we also know are capable of causing suffering in farmed animals.

Clearly, we have existing legislation to protect animal health and welfare, but the concern is that we should be very clear at the outset that we do not want to see gene editing used in ways that make it more possible for animals to endure harm and suffering. As the Nuffield Council on Bioethics put it,

“animals should not be bred merely to enable them to endure conditions of poor welfare more easily or in a way that would diminish their inherent capacities to live a good life.”

Some researchers aim to use gene editing to improve disease resistance in livestock. Of course, that could be hugely beneficial and could help to reduce the serious harm caused by the overuse of antibiotics, for instance. It would be hugely beneficial if we could find ways to tackle porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome in pigs or avian flu. But the public would not want to see gene editing used to allow animals to be kept in poorer, more crowded, stressful conditions by making them resistant to the diseases that would otherwise result.

--- Later in debate ---

Leipzig University has explored the possibility of changing the eggshell colour so that a male egg can be identified much earlier and sentient beings are not hatched and then killed. I think precision breeding techniques could phase out that very bleak practice of killing day-old male chicks, which is a clear part of the laying hen system.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I am very pleased to hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, as I have spent quite a lot of time trying to convince people that that does happen to day-old chicks. Is it not the case that some other European countries have introduced legislation on that point, so it is not necessarily linked to genetic technology? I think they have acted to prevent so many chicks being killed.

[George Eustice]

What a number of countries have done—the UK was in the vanguard of this—was to move away from maceration of day-old chicks towards the use of carbon dioxide and argon gas as a means of dispatching them. However, I think we could accelerate the process of identifying the eggs through the use of genetic technology.

Dehorning cattle is another mutilation that we would like to phase out over time. Progress has been made for some breeds on polled cattle—that is, cattle born without horns, so that we do not have to use a hot iron, albeit under anaesthetic, to de-bud them. Again, it is difficult to perfect without precision breeding techniques, but if we had that technology, we could have more polled cattle and reduce the need for conventional dehorning of cattle, or even pave the way for a regulatory change to prevent it.

There is also the prospect of breeding more resistance to diseases. In the dairy herd some selection is already done for natural resistance to bovine tuberculosis. It is limited in its ability, but if we had the technology, we might be able to go further.

At the moment, the Government plan to phase out and remove badger culling is predicated on a lot of confidence that a cattle vaccine will be viable and deployable, but it would be helpful to have additional tools in the box, and resistance to TB could be one of them. Of course, we are about to face another very difficult winter when it comes to avian flu, and this technology might have some application there.

However, my sense when I read amendment 4 was that whoever drafted it had had one sector in particular in mind—the broiler chicken sector. There is a genuine concern that the production speed of broiler chickens, reduced now to around 32 to 33 days, is so fast that they are having all sorts of leg problems, and we might be able to make some changes there. That is a legitimate point, because while we might say it has improved the welfare of a broiler chicken that it is bred to finish within 32 days, we might say it is in its welfare interest to ensure that it does not have leg problems. There is a second question, which is whether it is the ethical and right thing to do to produce a chicken within 32 days rather than, say, 37 days, in which case the welfare problem goes away.

A less obvious and less talked-about situation might be commercial duck production. We know that ducks need and want open water—it is part of their physiology and the way their beaks work. However, many commercial duck producers do not give ducks access to water. I have come across vets who will argue that it is in the interest of ducks not to have access to water, since that can spread disease and that is not in their welfare interest, but that goes to the root of the issue with animal welfare. We can either see animal welfare in the conventional five freedoms sense—freedom from pain, hunger, thirst and so on—or we can see it in the more modern sense of a life worth living.

The amendment does not work, because the more we put into an amendment the more we inadvertently exclude. If we accepted an amendment that proscribed certain things but missed certain things, at a future date a breeder might bring a judicial review and say, “Well, this wasn’t covered by the Bill and everything else was.” Therefore, we would not be future-proofing the importance of animal welfare.

However, that is where guidance could work. After Second Reading of the Bill, I asked our officials to give some thought to the idea of guidance, which might give organisations such as Compassion in World Farming and people such as Peter Stevenson, who is very thoughtful on these matters, the reassurance they need in the absence of a legislative change on the face of the Bill, which is difficult to do. The Minister may find that there is some guidance helpfully drafted—or it may be that it was not drafted, but it is not too late, because the Bill has time in the other House.

Will the Minister consider whether this issue of how the animal welfare body should approach its task and how it should assess the impacts on animal welfare could be dealt with in a non-statutory way through guidance. He and his officials will have to issue terms of reference anyway to the animal welfare body, which is likely to be a sub-committee of the Animal Welfare Committee, and it would not take much to set out some parameters for the things we want it to bear in mind when making assessments.

National Food Strategy and Food Security

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) for that comprehensive introduction. It means, I hope, that I can keep my remarks quite short. I agree on a lot of what she said, although she may not be surprised to hear that I do not agree with her about chickpeas. Hodmedod, a really good British pulse grower, has been growing them in Norfolk for the past few years and I urge her to support it in its efforts. There is so much potential and growing pulses here is really good for the soil. I can wax lyrical about things like chickpeas.

[Esther McVey]

I want to explain that I make a fabulous chickpea soup and stew. If anyone would like to know the recipes, I will be more than happy to share them.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I make a very good chana dal.

The debate is about food security, which the right hon. Lady covered in detail, but also about the national food strategy. I pay tribute to Henry Dimbleby, who put a huge amount of work into the strategy. I have a well-thumbed copy of the strategy document; it is almost like a Bible to me, giving an overview of all the different aspects of food policy and what we need to do.

I think Henry should feel let down by the inadequacy of the Government’s response to that document. I want to highlight some of the things the Government should be doing more on. The work was commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and he was an executive director there. It is disappointing that the Government are not treating that as the Bible for how to take things forward.

Food poverty is now far worse than when Henry Dimbleby started that work. We have seen frightening figures from the Office for National Statistics this week showing how prices of basic foodstuffs have shot up: vegetable oil by 65%; pasta by 60%; bread by 38%. The Food Foundation recently reported that 18% of households, and 26% of households with children, have experienced food insecurity in the past month. That is nearly 10 million adults, and around 4 million children. Many of those surveyed said they have cooked less, eaten food cold, turned off fridges and washed dishes in cold water because of concern about energy bills and rising inflation. Many were buying less fruit and vegetables.

On “Newsnight” last week, the former Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, said she had never seen child food poverty on this scale before. She called, as did Henry Dimbleby, for Cobra to be convened. I raised that at Cabinet Office questions this morning and got a response about how the Prime Minister wanted compassion to be at the heart of what he did, but I did not get a response on how a cross-departmental approach to tackling food poverty could be steered by the Cabinet Office. A cross-departmental approach is needed. As Henry Dimbleby said when giving evidence to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee last week, we need a structural mechanism to drive progress. If it is not Cobra, I would like to know from the Minister what mechanism he envisages would work.

Cobra is also very good at looking at granular detail, which is important because this calls for a localised response. We can express some generalities about food poverty, but Bristol, for example, which is known to be quite a foodie place, also has two of the top five food deserts in the entire country. There are estates in south Bristol where it is very difficult to access affordable and healthy food. So this needs to be done at a local level. My first question to the Minister is about how he sees that overarching response. Would DEFRA be leading? Does he see a role for Cobra?

In terms of swift action, the national food strategy is clear that extending eligibility for free school meals is one of the best levers we have. Extending it just to families on universal credit would feed an extra 1.4 million children. Healthy Start and holiday hunger schemes are also important.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing attention to the importance of families being able to afford healthy food—all the more important given the rising cost of living. In relation to Healthy Start, she will know that take-up of these essential vouchers that provide fresh fruit and veg, and milk and vitamins to pregnant and new mums and their children is at only about 60% across the country. Will she support me in calling on the Government to work across Departments so that those applying for universal credit who are also eligible for Healthy Start are automatically registered for that Healthy Start support?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. As I understand it, next week she will introduce a Bill, which I very much support and I hope that the Government will, too.

I do not have much time to talk about the importance of healthy diets, but does the Minister know what has happened to the health inequalities White Paper? Will we see that soon?

The national food strategy approach on junk food is quite straightforward: it is about restricting advertising and promotions, and targeting ingredients. Some people I know are concerned that that will mean increased costs for consumers, who can ill-afford to feed their families as it is. However, the suggestion is not to tax food in the shops but, for example, to tax sugar in the huge quantities bought by the food manufacturers, so it would be in their interests to reformulate their products to avoid that tax. We saw that happen with the soft drinks levy. I would be interested to know what the Minister thinks about that.

There is all this concern about the nanny state and not wanting to dictate to people what they do and do not eat. However, we accept that action on smoking is important for public health reasons and that action on alcohol abuse is important. When we look at the cost to the NHS of diet-related diseases and ill health, it seems a no-brainer to me to take an interventionist approach on this, too. It is not about telling people what they can and cannot eat; it is about helping them to make the right choices for themselves and their families, making sure that the education is out there and giving financial incentives such as the Healthy Start scheme.

In terms of other levers that could be used, public procurement could make a huge difference. The DEFRA consultation on public sector food and catering closed on 4 September. Could the Minister tell us when we will hear the results from that?

This may be going back to chickpeas, but the Mayor of New York, Eric Adams, who describes himself as an imperfect vegan—I suppose that is better than nothing—has introduced a scheme whereby the default option for catering in New York hospitals is plant-based. That does not mean that people cannot choose meat-based options or things that are not plant-based, but apparently it is proving to be really popular and there is good take-up. Again, that is a way of encouraging people down the path of taking a healthier option. I hope the Minister agrees that much of the food served in our hospitals—regardless of whether it is of animal origin—is not the sort of food we should be serving people we are trying to make healthier and better.

[Kate Green]

In that regard, my hon. Friend will be pleased to know that Healthy Start does support the provision of plant-based meals.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I am glad to hear that; it is a good step. I will not go into the environmental arguments. I hope that people accept that I am not trying to force people down a particular path, but the Climate Change Committee, the UN and several Cabinet Ministers have accepted that, for environmental and health reasons, we could do with reducing meat consumption.

I turn to the need for a land-use framework. I understand that the Government intend to publish one next year. Land is a finite, scarce resource, but we do not always treat it as such. We need to be strategic about how we use it for food, carbon sequestration, biodiversity and fuel. Where possible, “best and most versatile” land should be used for food growing,

It is nonsense for the Government to seek to reclassify poorer-quality soil as BMV as part of their war on solar farms. Is that ill-thought-out proposal still Government policy? It was a few weeks ago; I hope the Minister understands that I am finding it quite difficult to keep up. Could he tell me whether the proposal to reclassify poorer-quality land as BMV is still going to be brought through?

After yesterday’s Prime Minister’s questions, I am also not sure where the Government stand on onshore wind. Will the Minister clarify that? I am glad, however, to see that the fracking ban is back, but that one U-turn—or two U-turns—has left many casualties on the road in its wake. Again, that goes to the whole issue of what land is best used for. As Henry Dimbleby told the EFRA Committee last week, over the seven or eight decades since the war, we have been steadily producing more and more food on the same amount of land. He said:

“That is making the land sick, destroying the environment and driving out nature.”

What he said about the need for the land to be carbon-negative—not net zero—was spot on. The potential for carbon sequestration is huge, and by taking some of the least productive agricultural land out of production, we could enhance biodiversity at the same time as creating natural carbon sinks.

Some 20% of our farmland—mostly peatland and upland—produces only 3% of our calories. Henry Dimbleby argued that about 5% of that should come out of farming. The rest of the farmland would be higher yielding, with lower inputs and lower environmental costs.

[Mr Carmichael]

May I warn the hon. Lady about the law of unintended consequences? By way of illustration, I offer the example of my own family farm on Islay, not in my constituency but on the west coast. Our farm sits in a site of special scientific interest designed to protect choughs, which are a highly endangered species. However, chough numbers continue to decline because the way in which land is farmed discourages the presence of cattle and, to encourage chough, both sheep and cattle need to be on that land. If she is not careful, the sort of blunt tool that she is talking about could work to the detriment of the chough population.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I do not know why the right hon. Member says that I am suggesting a blunt tool.

[Mr Carmichael]

You mentioned talking land out of production.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Yes; Henry Dimbleby suggests that that 5% should come out of production. However he does not dictate that that should be anywhere that, perhaps, does not have certain productivity levels or does not do this or that. That brings me neatly to my concluding point.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I think that the hon. Gentleman will make a speech, so I will let him make his comments then.

This is where the environmental land management scheme comes in, which is a sophisticated approach and not a blunt tool. It is about looking at everything taking place on the land, including what is being done to support nature and biodiversity. I would think that the farmland mentioned by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) would very much come under those criteria; I hope so. My final question to the Minister is: where are we now with ELMS? Farmers are desperately seeking certainty on it. Will he confirm that the public money for public goods approach will still underpin support for our food and farming system?

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Double]

My hon. Friend is a strong champion for her constituency of Eastbourne and the businesses there. She is absolutely right. This is the first Government ever to take the action we are taking to address this long-standing issue that has been going on for many, many generations. She is absolutely right that the misinformation put out by some Opposition parties is shameless scaremongering.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

T5. During her leadership campaign, the now Prime Minister chose to make a big thing of solar panels being on agricultural land. She did not talk about biomass, which actually takes up far more arable land. Does the Secretary of State agree with her attacks on solar, or does he think that it has a role to play in helping to sort out our energy crisis?

[Mr Jayawardena]

I want to see top-quality agricultural land being used to grow food.

Shark Fins Bill

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I welcome the new Minister, the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), to his place. Having recently spent about six weeks with him in Committee, where he was absolutely superb, I am sure he will be just as successful in his new role as he was in his old role. I thank all Members across the House for their support. I thank the Clerks, civil servants, officials, parliamentary counsel, the Whips—nobody ever thanks the Whips—and my staff. I am delighted to promote this Bill.

I will start by explaining why a ban on the import and export of detached shark fins is crucial to sharks’ long-term conservation. Sharks are truly incredible animals. They have been around for over 400 million years—long before the dinosaurs. As top predators, they tell us a huge amount about the health of our ocean and play a vital role in marine ecosystems. Many species of sharks live in UK waters, from basking sharks to blue sharks and even Greenland sharks. The basking shark is the UK’s largest fish, growing up to 11 metres long and weighing up to 7 tonnes—about the size of a double-decker bus.

These fascinating species face many threats, the greatest of which is overfishing. Out of 500 shark species, more than a quarter are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, ranging from “vulnerable” to “critically endangered”. The international fin trade is a significant driving force behind shark overfishing. Shark finning is an extraordinarily wasteful and harmful practice in which only 2% to 5% of the shark is even used. Once a shark’s fins are cut off at sea, the shark is tossed back into the water to slowly drown. Researchers have found that at least 73 million sharks would have to be killed every year to match the volume of shark fins that are traded in the global market, which is a whopping 1 million to 2 million tonnes a year. While not all of these sharks would have been killed through the shark finning practices, it is likely the fin trade is a significant driving force behind those numbers.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing forward such an amazing Bill; I would love to be in her position. When reading up in advance of this debate I discovered that I had not realised the extent to which European countries are involved in facilitating this trade. The market is in Asia, but Portugal, Netherlands, France, Italy and, in particular, Spain are significant players in supplying that market. Does she agree that we should absolutely not countenance that?

[Christina Rees]

My hon. Friend has always been a doughty champion for animal welfare. I will come to her point later in my speech, but I agree wholeheartedly. If we can get the Bill into law, we in the UK will be the leaders in Europe in banning shark finning.

Sharks desperately need our help and protection. I am an animal lover; I have been privileged to open Westminster Hall debates about animal welfare as a member of the Petitions Committee, and it is a privilege to introduce the Bill today. I grew up near the sea. I spent most of my childhood with my granny, who lived in Porthcawl, a beautiful seaside resort in south Wales. When I was 10, I joined the junior lifeguards and became a surfer. My love and respect for the sea and the marine creatures that live in it has stayed with me throughout my life.

My close encounter with a shark about 10 years ago is typical of the many stories that I could tell about my crazy, unpredictable, funny life. One day, my wonderful daughter Angharad said, “Mum, we haven’t had a holiday since I was 10”; she was 26 at the time. I said, “Oh dear, time flies—go ahead and book one,” so Angharad booked 10 days in Australia followed by 10 days in New Zealand. It completely cleaned out my bank account; I was a poorly paid squash coach at the time and had foolishly thought that she would book a weekend in north Wales.

On the Australian leg, we stayed a couple of nights on Green Island, an absolutely beautiful and remote island off Cairns. One day, I was snorkelling in the shadows off the deserted shoreline. Angharad was standing on the rocks and keeping a lookout for stingrays, because we had been warned that they were prevalent in the waters. When I came up for air, she shouted, “Mum! Shark!” I thought, “Yeah, very funny, Angharad.” She was pointing out to sea, so I turned around—and I absolutely froze.

Swimming towards me was one of the most beautiful creatures that I have ever seen: a shark about 2 metres long, looking like a small, sleek submarine. By now, Angharad was shouting her head off, so I came out of my brain fog and ran out of the sea as fast as my little legs would carry me. We stood on the rocks and watched. We were mesmerised, absolutely gobsmacked and many, many other adjectives by how lucky we were to see that wonderful wild creature up close before it majestically swam out into the sunset. That was my encounter with a shark.

Shark finning has rightly been banned in the UK since 2003 and is illegal in many other parts of the world, but it still happens, so we must now ensure that shark fins are not being imported from places where finning practices still occur. This important and timely Bill will make it illegal to import and export detached shark fins. That will help to end practices that are forcing sharks closer to the brink of extinction. The Bill will be a significant step in helping to restore the balance of our ocean.

Clause 1 will ban the import and export of shark fins or items containing shark fins into or from the United Kingdom as a result of their entry into or removal from Great Britain. The ban applies only to fins that have been removed from the body of a shark. Clause 1 also contains a provision for exemption certificates and clarifies some key definitions. More information about the provision for exemption certificates is set out in the schedule. A very strict application process is followed whereby the appropriate authority can issue an exemption certificate only if the shark fins concerned will be used for conservation purposes. This will allow important conservation and educational activities such as improving shark identification skills to continue where needed.

The appropriate authorities for imports and exports of shark fins are the Secretary of State in England, the Scottish Ministers in Scotland and the Welsh Ministers in Wales. Where someone has deliberately provided inaccurate or incomplete information for an exemption, the appropriate authority can impose a monetary penalty of up to £3,000, which will ensure that the exemptions process is not abused. The Bill contains a power for the appropriate authority to amend the upper limit of the penalty by regulations.

It is important to note that the Bill does not ban the sale or consumption of shark fins. If a shark fin is removed from a shark after it is dead, and the shark was caught legally and sustainably, I do not see why the fin should not be used. In fact, it would be wasteful not to use the whole carcase. Banning the sale or consumption of shark fins that have been obtained ethically would disproportionately impact communities where shark fin soup is considered a traditional delicacy, and that is not what I seek to do.

[Christina Rees]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that valid point. I am sure that the issue can be thrashed out in Committee, should we reach that stage. I have looked into the research and there are gaps in the data regarding how much personal usage is being allowed, but I know that Border Force does look at that.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I am a little concerned about what has just been said about allowing importation for use—for example, in the restaurant trade—provided that it can be shown that the shark was killed for other reasons. To what extent would people be able to check that that was the case, or would they see it as a loophole, and pretend that the shark had died by other means and that they were using the whole carcase? It is odd to me that someone would kill a huge shark just for its fins, but we know that that is mostly what happens. What safeguards will there be to ensure that people do not exploit that rule?

[Christina Rees]

I thank my hon. Friend for her important intervention. We are both lifelong vegans, so I have thought about the issue greatly. I have never bought a tin of shark fin soup—I wouldn’t—or any other tins of soup with bits of animals in, but I am sure that where the content had come from and how it was farmed would be written on the label.

[Kerry McCarthy]

When I raised the issue a long time ago—I think in my early years in Parliament—I received some pushback from the restaurant trade, but I also learnt that a lot of the shark fin soup sold in restaurants is not real shark fin, but because it is seen as prestigious and luxurious, restaurants did not want to admit that it was not the real thing. It was bizarre that people were consuming something that was far more ethical than they thought it was. I am therefore not quite sure whether labelling would work, because a lot of the product being sold turns out not to be shark fin. That is probably another issue to be thrashed out in Committee.

[Christina Rees]

I am grateful for another superb intervention from my hon. Friend, and I bow to her wisdom. Sometimes we do not get what is written on the tin.

Clause 2 amends article 1 of the shark finning regulation 1185/2003, which forms part of retained EU law, to make sure that shark finning cannot take place by any vessel fishing in UK waters, or by any UK vessel fishing in non-UK waters. That ensures that our domestic protections are of the highest standard. Clause 3 sets out the territorial extent of the Bill and when or how each provision comes into force. As the Bill relates to devolved matters, legislative consent will be sought from the devolved Administrations during the passage of the Bill, but I understand that they are supportive of taking action against the cruel and unsustainable shark fin trade.

I would like to thank stakeholders and colleagues who have contacted me on this important matter, particularly members of Shark Guardian and Bite-Back Shark & Marine Conservation, who have been instrumental in throwing a spotlight on the issue of shark finning for many years—some of them are watching from the Gallery today. Since 2004, Bite-Back Shark & Marine Conservation has been at the forefront of successful campaigns to end the sale and consumption of shark fins and shark products in Britain. In recent years it launched its “No Fin To Declare” campaign—I love the name—exposing Britain’s contributions to the global shark fin trade. The charity argues that a decision to ban all import and exports of detached shark fins will establish Britain as a global leader in the conservation of sharks and, ultimately, inspire other countries to introduce their own bans and join the UK in the protection of this keystone marine species.

In 2021, Shark Guardian, a charity based in Nottingham, launched a petition on Parliament’s website to ban the British shark fin trade, which secured more than 115,000 signatures, showing the depth of support for my Bill among a passionate and caring British public. Shark Guardian believes that if my Bill is passed into law, that will have a huge and positive knock-on effect on the continent, because the European Union will have to take note of our legislation, and take steps to pass a similar EU law to ban the import and export of shark fin through its borders too, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East mentioned. That is important because Spain is by far the single biggest exporter of frozen shark fins to Hong Kong, a city that has, for many years, been the epicentre of this cruel and unsustainable trade. If the supply chain to Hong Kong, and, by extension to China, can be cut, global shark populations that are threatened with extinction today can be offered a new lease of hope tomorrow.

This Bill is crucial to ensuring the long-term survival and recovery of vital shark populations. It is an important step for the UK to demonstrate its leadership and commitment to shark conservation. I therefore urge all Members to support the smooth passage of the Bill through this House and onto the statute book.

Protecting and Restoring Nature: COP15 and Beyond

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I was not aware of that—I am now—and what a great idea for countries to work together in that way.

When we were taking the Bill that became the 2009 Act through Parliament, I was really quite surprised to discover how little we appeared to know about what was on the seabed surrounding these islands. Some very intrepid divers, some of whom I met, went down and took photographs. If the photos were shown to me or to anybody else and the question was asked, “Where was that picture taken?”, most people would say, “Is that the Great Barrier Reef?” No—it was under the murky waters of the North sea.

One thing we know about nature is that although we have been destroying it at a rate of knots, if we give it the chance, it can recover with astonishing speed. The North sea was originally covered abundantly in oyster beds, coarse peat banks and rock deposited by glaciers, and it was home to a rich community of marine species. A lot of that was sadly destroyed by bottom-trawl fisheries over the past century and it is now a relatively poor community of species.

Let me say a word on bottom trawling. It is an incredibly destructive practice, but it is unseen because it takes place beneath the waves. To make a slightly absurd analogy, let us imagine that to collect apples, someone decided to drag a net across the countryside taking with it all the hedges, tree saplings, bird nests and the trees on which the apples hang just for the purpose of collecting the apples in the process. People would be outraged and appalled, but that is what we have been doing on the surface of the seabed for a long time and no one sees it happening. It is about bearing witness to what is going on. The right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), who is not in his place, talked about the deforestation of the Amazon. The thing about technology is that, with satellites, we can see how the rainforest is reducing over time. It is really important that we use all those means to bear witness to what is taking place in order to motivate change.



We find the recovery of nature in some surprising places. There has been a lot of debate about the impact of wind farms on birds, but research has shown that, in effect, wind farms act as artificial reefs. They can host a very wide range of marine species once nature has had a chance to recover.

My final point is about the contribution that nature makes to our health and wellbeing.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I am sorry that I could not be here for the beginning of the debate. Is there not a concern that although many marine protected areas have been designated, they are really just paper parks because things like bottom trawling are being allowed to continue? Does my right hon. Friend also share my concern that there is now a move towards deep-sea mining, which could be hugely environmentally damaging?

[Hilary Benn]

Yes, I do. There was cross-party support in the House of Commons for the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and the creation of marine conservation zones. We basically have a planning framework; we have had one on land for a long time, but we did not have one for the sea at all. We are now confronted with a choice about what we permit. The ability to understand the consequences of what is happening beneath the waves is important. We now have the means to do something about it, but we cannot just say “We’ve got the designation —job done,” and move on to something else. That is not sufficient at all.

Yesterday, my wife and I were discussing what I might talk about in this speech. Apart from telling me, “You must mention the water voles,”—I have now duly done so, and I hope that she has noticed—she said, “Tell them about our oak trees.” For the past 30 years or so, we have been planting oak trees from seed, along with ash and silver birch trees. “Nature reserve” would be a very grand title for the eight acres of former farmland in Essex that my mother set aside, where nature has been left to do its work. The tallest oak tree is probably about 20 or 25 feet now. Over the years, the trees that we have planted—the trees that nature has brought—have brought with them cuckoos, owls, adders, foxes, muntjac deer, the odd badger and white campion, as well as loads of brambles that I attempt to do battle with whenever I can. Every time I walk on that piece of land, I feel the same sense of anticipation about what has changed, what has grown and what is different.

Why do we feel like this? Because nature is part of our very soul. It is about who we are and where we come from. Think of how we encounter it—looking out of the window of a train as it rushes through the countryside, seeing the first crocus of spring, encountering the wonders and glories of the Yorkshire dales, seeing a view of Ditchling Beacon or a view of Scafell Pike from Great Moss, or hearing the buzz of a bee at the height of summer. We do not hear that buzz as much as we used to, or see as many moths. I remember when moths were really common in the summer. When did I last see one? There was an extraordinary experiment in which people were asked to put a bit of sticky plastic on their number plate, drive around and count how many insects were caught. That showed that there has been a catastrophic decline.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I am delighted to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), whom I congratulate on securing the debate.

Here is my perspective. Life on this planet has been going for 4.5 billion years—4,500 million years. Human beings have been on this planet for 6 million years. That means that we have been around for 0.013% of the time that life has existed on this planet. We are cashing in 4.5 billion years of planetary saving bonds and blowing it on bling, and nothing but our own hubris gives us the right to do so. Exponential growth within a finite system leads to collapse, and that is what is happening—collapse. We know it is happening. Only last weekend, as I was in Durham, the IPBES report set out again what we already know: the global rate of species extinction is between 10 to 100 times higher than the average rate over the past 10 million years. We are living in the Anthropocene—the sixth great extinction event. Human activity is actually being compared to the asteroid that obliterated the dinosaurs—except that unlike the asteroid we know what we are doing. We know that 12% of tree species and over 1,300 wild mammal species are threatened by unsustainable logging and hunting, more than 25% of the world’s forests are subject to industrial logging, and 34% of marine wild fish stocks are overfished—but the plunder goes on.

We politicians are strange creatures: we say we want to do the right thing but so often we end up doing the easy thing instead. We spend our lives trying to win, but in this struggle between ourselves and our planet, there is always going to be just one winner: planet Earth will continue in a new form long after we have made it impossible for our own species to live on it. Reversing the trend of biodiversity loss requires urgent, transformative change. That is code for saying that we need to consume less, because at the current rate of consumption, we would need three planets-worth of resources by 2050. That means that we must examine our economy. It is not just about reducing our consumption; it is about changing our economic accounting model in order to account properly for the free goods and services that we are destroying. Pollination services, clean air, the purification of water by forests and the protection of coastal cities by mangroves are all regarded as externalities by classical economics.

Let me now enter into the earlier debate between the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion—my hon. Friend on this side—and the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), whom, certainly in terms of conservation, I am happy to call an hon. Friend on the other side. Our obsession with GDP suggests that the coastal surge that destroyed cities such as New Orleans—under hurricane Katrina—resulted in the growth of GDP owing to the economic activity when all the new levees were built. The disaster that destroyed so many lives and so much wealth is counted in our economic system, GDP, as a positive, but the loss of the tupelo and cypress forest swamp, which had previously—when the trees were not being taken down—reduced the surge swell and protected the city, was not counted as a negative in any economic calculation.

The Dasgupta review, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central referred, set out with great economic force the consequences of what Professor Dasgupta termed “impact inequality”: the imbalance between humanity’s demand and nature’s supply, and the need to reconstruct economics so that nature is an essential part of it and ecosystem services are properly valued. It was disappointing that when the then Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch), appeared before the Environmental Audit Committee to discuss the Dasgupta review, it became clear that she had not read it. Yesterday, when the chair of the Committee on Climate Change appeared before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and was asked about DEFRA’s plan for net zero, it was notable that he said not only that there was no clarity for others, but that there was no implementation that it was possible to judge because the metrics were not there. Just as the Government should implement net zero stress tests for all budgets, so they should implement net nature tests against all expenditure to ensure that alignment with our post-2030 biodiversity framework is maintained.

That brings me to the importance of data. We are extraordinarily blessed in this country to have more than 250 years of amateur scientific data-gathering. We have baselines against which we can say, with real confidence, that 41% of all UK species have declined in the past 52 years, since 1970, but under-employed Church of England vicars and other gentlefolk going back to Georgian England provide us with a database that other countries can only of dream of. May I ask the Minister to ensure that our support for COP15, and the financial assistance that we make available to countries, focus on enabling them to have an accurate dataset of their own natural and biological assets.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

I will give both ways, but not simultaneously. I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy).

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank my hon. Friend. What he is saying about data is a huge issue for the small island developing states, because there is so much biodiversity, particularly in the territorial waters, and populations of perhaps a few hundred are somehow expected to manage a vast space. I agree with what he said about the importance of supporting them, and our overseas territories, so that they can do that work.

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. One of the constant problems, particularly in our overseas territories, which do not have the resources to be able to establish their own datasets, is the gaming between them and the Foreign Office, because technically, through the convention on biological diversity, we are responsible for the biodiversity in those overseas territories.

It is a great tragedy that this palming off of responsibility between the two continues. I know that the Minister is new in post, and I welcome him to his post, but I hope he will have robust discussions with his colleagues in the Foreign Office about this. Perhaps he could whisper something to that effect in Lord Goldsmith’s ear, given that he is Minister of State in both DEFRA and the Foreign Office. This really does need to be sorted out. The overseas territories need that support to get the database.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention. He is right that we need to look at land restoration as one of the key indicators. It is particularly the case in sub-Saharan African countries, which are facing an increasing challenge of desertification from climate change, which they are having to fight against, rather than just looking at the land that is already semi-desert and trying to see how to restore that. It is a huge problem. The NBSAPs must be living documents, which is why they need to be ratcheted up, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion said, every five years between major COPs.

Let me turn to finance. I pay tribute to Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, who spoke at the beginning of COP26. For my money, she was the most powerful speaker at the whole event. She pointed out to the politicians assembled for the launch of COP26 that the promise we had given was for $100 billion a year to be put into the global planet fund to help the global south to cope with climate change and to take effective mitigation efforts. We have not delivered that, and we are nowhere near delivering it. She pointed out that it was not because we could not afford it, because we had just spent $9 trillion—trillions, not billions—bailing ourselves out over the covid pandemic. The funds are available and they must be made available.

The extent of quantitative easing that the global north has allowed itself since the 2008 global financial crisis has been more than $36 trillion. What is COP15 asking for? It is asking for the same as was promised at COP26: $100 billion a year, rising to $700 billion a year. That is essential. If we are to enable those developing countries in the global south to do exactly what the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell was talking about with regard to the restoration of degraded land, and if we are to deal with these problems, we have to be serious. As the human species, we do not have the right not to be.

[Kerry McCarthy]

On the amount of money we need to give to help countries in the global south to cope, those countries are often faced with crippling debt—we had the whole jubilee debt campaign. Belize, for example, is a small island state that is right in the forefront of the impacts of climate change. It has incredible biodiversity that needs protecting, but is crippled by debt repayments. If we do not deal with that side of the equation, there is not an awful lot of point giving such countries money to help them invest in the sort of projects my hon. Friend is talking about.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend made that intervention at precisely that moment, because it enables me to talk about green finance, and the importance of involving the private sector and ensuring that critical private finance is coming in. Green bonds and debt-for-biodiversity swaps are innovative and fundamental ways in which we should facilitate countries such as Belize to tackle the environmental problems they face. It cannot be done without money, and it cannot be done simply with public money. In fact, green bonds are now classed as more attractive than ordinary, vanilla bonds, because they tackle not one issue, but two; they mitigate risk on two factors. The secondary market in green bonds has really taken off.

I want to talk about the way in which the financial sector needs to be regulated and guided through the issue. The right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell spoke about the way in which our financial sector was incentivising deforestation, particularly in Brazil. He is absolutely correct. We should not simply say, as is the Government’s position, that companies need to declare their climate and sustainability actions in their mandatory annual reporting, and that they should not fund any activity, such as ranching in Brazil, that drives illegal deforestation. That is not good enough. When those stipulations were put in place, countries such as Brazil simply changed the law to make it legal so that they could continue to receive the finance. There must be objectivity about whether something is or is not deforestation.

I am conscious that I should not take up too much more time, but it is critical that COP15 addresses access and benefit sharing. We will not have global agreement and global co-operation on the environment and our failing global biodiversity unless biopiracy by pharmaceutical companies is addressed. These companies must not go into communities—my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central referred to this—and say, “We are going to take the genetic sequences of these two trees and use them in our pharmaceutical products, but you will not get any advantages from it.” That is why the UK must be foursquare behind access and benefit sharing at COP15.

An ecosystem has the right to exist, to flourish, to regenerate its vital cycles and to evolve naturally without human disruption. Nature has rights. We often think that rights apply only to us, but trusts and institutions have rights, and those rights are safeguarded by trustees and guardians. That is us. Nobody else is here to argue for nature. We must be the guardians of that trust. We have been on this planet for only 0.13% of the time that biodiversity has existed. We have no right to destroy the world around us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

I rise today in place of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), who is on an Inter-Parliamentary Union visit to Kosovo and hence is not able to be in the Chamber today. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), the shadow Secretary of State, is visiting Yorkshire, so I am afraid the House is stuck with me. I thank the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing this debate and for her speech. I have enjoyed listening to all the powerful, interesting, educational and unifying calls for action among the speeches we have heard here.

When we were notified last week that this motion would be considered by the House, many of us were concerned that we would be Minister-less, but our fears have thankfully been calmed, because the people’s business must go on despite a caretaker Government and its outgoing Prime Minister. We are also relieved to find the Secretary of State safe in his caretaker position at DEFRA. I welcome the Minister formally to his place; I look forward to his completing his eight-week job interview, and I hope he will be able to stay on.

I place on record my genuine thanks to the hon. Members for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) and for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) following their resignations from the Front Bench last week. We did not always agree, but we developed a respectful working relationship, and more than once we joked that we saw more of each other than we did of our spouses, children and loved ones, due to the constant flow of DEFRA-related business in the House.

It has been a very quiet week here in Westminster, with not a lot going on at all. As such, I was grateful to be able to use this time to reflect on the critical work required to preserve our planet and protect our environment. I am very clear that we need the upcoming COP15 summit to do more than just contribute to global warming through lots of hot air; we need it to deliver for the planet’s wildlife and for its people. It will be no surprise to the House that I am here to reiterate Labour’s approach to the environment, which has always been driven by those twin priorities. We on the Labour Benches believe that those priorities are even more important now, because in a time of such cost of living desperation, both internationally and here at home, we cannot deliver for one without the other. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) for his stark example of GDP versus biodiversity with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Delivering for the natural world requires social and economic justice. That is something that the Leader of Opposition recognises, and I hope the Minister will recognise it too. The approach of protecting a few isolated green spaces and relying on markets is failing and gets us nowhere near far enough, and certainly not fast enough, as the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) highlighted earlier.

In any case, we are seeing protections eroded because commercial demands for land are insatiable and some in this House have the wrong spending priorities. Time and again, across the world and at home, we see the most disadvantaged communities suffering the worst impacts of environmental degradation: their homes flooded and swept away in deadly landslides, their fields and livestock left parched by drought, their homes left draughty, cold and damp through lack of insulation while fossil fuel-dependent energy bills soar, their children’s health blighted by fossil fuel-generated air pollution, sewage pumped into their local rivers and over playing fields, and their neighbourhoods devoid of the green space and nature that lockdown surely taught us are so essential for human mental and physical wellbeing.

The United Kingdom has been among the most nature-depleted countries for decades. The Natural History Museum’s biodiversity intactness index revealed that the world has crashed through the “safe limit for humanity” level of for biodiversity loss, and saw the UK’s 53% score place it in the bottom 10% of countries.

That is well below China, and humiliatingly we are last in the G7—so much for global Britain. In practice it means that even some of our most iconic and much loved animals are being added to the growing list of endangered species. Eleven of the 47 mammals native to Great Britain are at imminent risk of extinction, including the red squirrel, wildcat, water vole, dormouse and hedgehog. I pay tribute to the Members who have declared their animal championing pedigrees, such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). A further five native mammals have a realistic possibility of becoming threatened with extension in the near future, including the mountain hare.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I was under instruction, had I been able to make a speech, to mention that I am parliamentary species champion for the swift and to make a plea for us to protect and to increase their habitats by ensuring that there are swift bricks in every new building. I have got that on the record.

[Ruth Jones]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the great work she does on biodiversity and as a swift champion. I will add that to my list of champions in the House. We know that puffins are projected to decline across Britain and Ireland by up to 90% within 30 years, and they are among 14 seabird species regarded as being at risk of negative climate change impacts. The shadow Minister for the natural environment, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West recently visited RSPB Bempton Cliffs, renowned for its puffins, but was not able to find a single one.

Ministers, notably Lord Goldsmith, often pat themselves on the back claiming they are doing all they can to advance the environmental agenda, but the fact of the matter is that our nature teeters on a cliff edge. I hope when the new Prime Minister takes office on 6 September that she or he will set out clearly how they will pull nature back from the brink. Under this caretaker Prime Minister, we all see a Tory Government consistently making the wrong choices, failing to engage with stake- holders properly, delaying action and ducking the urgent challenges facing us all.

Rather than setting the international agenda on biodiversity and leading the debate, the Budget last year—delivered as world leaders began to arrive for COP26—did not even mention climate change. The former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) found time to give a tax break for domestic flights and fell woefully short on the investment needed to deliver green jobs and a fair transition. It does not bode well for how he would approach the top job.

The Conservatives’ Environment Act 2021, which was well known as the “missing in action” Bill as it worked its way through the House, set a target on species abundance, and the Minister will recall that DEFRA Ministers were forced to concede that action was needed. Sadly, they only went as far as promising to halt the decline in species by 2030. Just halting the decline is not good enough—our ambition should be nature-positive here at home and in our work with colleagues on the world stage through COP15.

In 2020, the Government managed to deliver less than half their target of 5,000 hectares of new trees in England, and we had empty words from Lord Goldsmith that they would do better. The planned spending on tree planting is dwarfed by subsidies to Drax to ship and burn wood pellets from around the world, particularly from the US, with a lack of due diligence to make sure it is not from virgin forest. Meanwhile, the Government are doing far too little to protect the trees we do have. Deforestation is increasing across the planet and our consumption in Britain is driving deforestation abroad, which impacts here and across the world. Here, I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central for his dogged tree-planting over the past 30 years.

In the Environment Act 2021, the Government’s due diligence measures cover only illegal deforestation. Why are we agreeing trade deals with countries such as Brazil, Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia while they continue to destroy rainforests? Just yesterday, we saw reports that deforestation of the Amazon is at its highest level for six years. The right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell highlighted that in his speech earlier. We must remember that human rights are always threatened when rainforest deforestation happens, and the best stewards of those rainforests are the indigenous people who have cared for them for thousands of years and for whom they are home. Funding men with guns to guard empty rainforest is not a sustainable or ethical policy, but sadly it appears to be one that this Prime Minister and DEFRA have pursued up until now.

Action has been inadequate across DEFRA policy for far too long. Water companies have continued to be allowed to pump sewage into rivers, and that has only hastened the decline of endangered species. After the Government finally got an ivory ban on the statute book in 2018, their dither and delay meant that it did not actually come into force until years after many other countries had acted. They have failed to deliver promised wildlife protection legislation to ban trophy hunting and fur imports. Last week I had a very good meeting with former President of Botswana Ian Khama, who, although out of office, is a really doughty and dogged campaigner for the rights of animals. Obviously he backs a global ban on trophy hunting.

Meanwhile at home, thousands and thousands of badgers continue to be killed. The Government have also authorised bee-killing neonic pesticides and have failed to act to stop illegal hunting or effectively limit peat extraction and moorland burning, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) outlined in her speech. Of course, I cannot forget foxhunting. The killing of any animal will have an impact on our natural world and biodiversity, and hunting is no different. We have so many more priorities; I urge the Government to clean our waters, clean our air and protect our green spaces as a starter for 10.

Labour will deliver the change that we all want to see. Action at home must showcase for the world how a positive nature policy can practically be delivered across Government. The shadow Chancellor has committed a Labour Government to a robust net zero and nature-positive test for every policy. That will be backed with a £28 billion a year investment to meet the challenge of the climate and nature emergency, create certainty for business, and provide leadership as we seize all the opportunities before our United Kingdom.

Earlier this week I attended the online meeting with Patrick Vallance. Nobody who was there could have failed to leave fired up and ready to do whatever is necessary to protect our planet and preserve our environment. We can address both the cost of living crisis and the climate crisis. I say to the Government: if they cannot do both, they should get out of the way because we will. The truth is that, when we want them to, Government can and do make real change to the lives of people and our environment, too. The clock is ticking on the Prime Minister’s time in office, and it is ticking on our mission to save our planet, too. Now is the time for transformational change for our people and our planet. I wish COP15 well and hope that all those round the table will heed the warnings, wake up and smell the coffee, and get back to work.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Daniel Zeichner]

Good morning to you, Mr Davies, and to everybody. I think this will be an interesting and, I hope, fruitful discussion. It is a fascinating subject, and it is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Davies.

At the outset, let me start by repeating Labour’s mantra on this Bill. We are pro science, pro innovation and we want Britain’s scientists to succeed and to be at the very forefront of development. We want the investment, but we argue that investment comes from regulatory certainty and clarity. We are concerned that the Government have sadly failed to provide that. As a consequence, the risk is that, far from getting ahead, the UK gets caught in a paralysis, as investors look to see what others are doing and put developments on hold. This legislation really matters.

I hope that the Government will weigh carefully the superficially attractive benefits of moving quickly in search of what they claim to be a Brexit opportunity against the longer-term benefit of getting it right. The genetically edited tortoise versus the selectively bred hare, or vice versa one could perhaps say.

We are particularly concerned about the place of animals in the Bill, so we are starting with what could be described as a veritable blockbuster group of amendments, which would frankly remove animals from the scope of the Bill. We think that that is appropriate for several reasons. We recognise that the Government may not agree with us on this, and in the unlikely possibility of their winning the votes, we have tabled many further amendments to later clauses that we think will strengthen the framework of the genetic editing of animals, which will be discussed later. We have done this, because as I said on Second Reading, we think that the Government have got it the wrong way round on animals.

All the secondary legislation that has preceded the Bill was really about plants, not animals. Likewise in much of the discussion ahead of the Bill, much of the Government’s language again focused on plants. The consultation that was held by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs referenced animals, but I would say in passing that at the time that did not seem to be the main focus of attention. It was a surprise to many in the House, as well as to concerned outside stakeholder and advocacy groups, that the Government chose to include animals in the Bill as they have.

When we look at the Bill, there is some evidence of the lack of really concrete provisions in the vague and non-committal timeframes offered by the Government, and the admission that much of the preparation necessary for a regulatory framework for animals has not yet been done. A document that I hope Members have had the opportunity to read is the impact assessment. If we want to know what the Government are really thinking, it is not in the Bill, but in the impact assessment, and I will reference it many times.

A good example of the point that I am making is on page 41 of the impact assessment, right at the top, in paragraph 109:

“Despite the potential benefits accrued by applying changes to the GMO regulations in animals, there is currently high risk of considerable consumer backlash in altering their regulations.”

The Government are well aware of the risks, and we are as well.

The Bill is in effect a framework Bill, with little detail on actual intentions and provisions laid out in law. It delegates a broad set of sweeping powers to Ministers not only to bring in a lot of secondary legislation, but to amend primary legislation with a Henry VIII clause hidden further on, which we will debate later.

The impact assessment lays out some further detail on the powers in the Bill. Again, it explicitly states on the secondary power contained in it that

“an understanding of the impacts of these provisions is not fully developed”—

so, not fully developed—

“A full understanding of the impacts will be developed ahead of any of the provisions being tabled, with impact assessments for each developed for scrutiny.”

That is on page 38, in paragraph 97. In the Government’s own impact assessment of the Bill, they are admitting that a huge amount of work still needs to be done.

The Government also know, as we well know from the many discussions we have had in this very room on secondary legislation, that it is slightly disingenuous of them to suggest that we will have further discussion because, with secondary legislation, we know full well that there is no ability to amend and, frankly, fairly limited opportunity to scrutinise. Given that the issues are big, complicated and of public interest, I do not think that that is good enough.

Those who have looked at our procedures and at the way we operate in this House have said before that, if the Government intend to do that kind of thing, they could have drafted statutory instruments in advance, for example, but none of that has happened. The Bill is in essence a framework Bill, and as others have argued elsewhere, that is not the right way to do legislation. That is important not just in principle, but because the Bill is a significant piece of legislation. It could—will—have wide-ranging impacts on our food system, on the health and welfare of animals in this country and, as I have argued before, on the investment climate.

As has been raised numerous times, both on Second Reading and by many of the witnesses in the evidence sessions—those excellent sessions we had—the public have real concerns about the technology, in particular about its application to animals. Again going back to the impact assessment, paragraph 9 on page 11 states:

“Historically, ethical concerns have dominated the GM space, preventing proper consideration of scientific evidence.”

In itself, that is an interesting sentence, although not one I would recommend: to suggest that ethical concerns should not be considered in the broader debate is not a good starting point. It is a clumsy observation.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern about that point. We heard from several witnesses that we should be talking about animal welfare not in this Bill, but in connection with other legislation, such as the Animal Welfare Act 2006 or the farm animal welfare codes. That is almost, “Put that to one side; this is just about the science.” Does he share my concern that we are not looking at the Bill in the round and considering those ethical issues?

[Daniel Zeichner]

As ever, my hon. Friend speaks good sense. She is absolutely right. There is huge interest and I think understanding among the public of the potential benefits and of the potential risks. That is why we should have a proper discussion and debate in the round. We will keep coming back to that today and on further days, as we try to discern the Government’s thinking from the Bill. We have to work quite hard to understand the wider framework within which this sits, and the overall impact it will have. We will keep coming back to that, so I very much agree with her.

To go back to the impact assessment, at paragraph 122, again there is recognition that public acceptance remains uncertain, with the document referring to

“public scepticism and non-acceptance of GE products, including those that qualify as PBOs”—

precision bred organisms.

The Government are also clear—as are we—about the potential benefits and the need to weigh them proportionately with the risks. We would argue that to do so, and to ensure public confidence, the Government need to be absolutely transparent and explicit about the changes they are seeking to make. As I have indicated, however, that is not really going on at the moment. It seems that we are being asked to vote for a blank cheque that would give the Government the power to set up any regulatory framework that they desire, without proper discussion about the merits of one particular framework over another.

That was made clear in evidence, particularly that of Professor Gideon Henderson, the chief scientific adviser at DEFRA, who said:

“The passage of this Bill has pointed to those problems in animal welfare and made them clearer, and made it necessary to deal with them quite explicitly before we can enact legislation about precision breeding for animals.”––[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Public Bill Committee, 28 June 2022; c. 18, Q26.]

I quite agree. He also said that the process of considering the evidence on animal welfare

“will have to take place before secondary legislation can be enacted. The process for that is laid out in the Bill, and the timescale will be something like two to three years where scientific input will feed in.”––[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Public Bill Committee, 28 June 2022; c. 17, Q24.]

We know that the Government’s thinking is that that would take some years—possibly two to three; possibly longer—but no such process or timescale is laid out in the Bill. If more time is needed to get the provisions right, why not focus on doing that rather than asking us, essentially, to allow them to pass and to ask questions only afterwards? I do not think that is how we get good legislation, and even more worryingly, that is not how we maintain public confidence. This is quite a big decision, as these matters are a big part of the Bill, but we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that animals should be excluded for now, until DEFRA and the Government have carried out the very large piece of work that they clearly and self-evidently need to do—as they admit—before they are ready to come back to the House with concrete proposals.

Amendment 29 would remove “or a precision bred animal” from the definition of “precision bred organism” in subsection 1(1). That term will itself be subject to further discussion in a few minutes, but I think that the effect of the amendment is clear.

Amendment 30 would remove paragraph 1(7)(b) and is consequential on amendment 29. Should the amendments be successful, there would need to be many further consequential amendments later in the Bill, but rather than putting the Clerks to the task of considerable further drafting work, we thought it might be sensible to test the water first. Consequently, we will not press amendments 29 and 30 to a vote, but we will test the view of the Committee with amendment 28, which can be found the end of the amendment paper and would amend the Bill’s title to remove references to animals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

Amendments 32 and 10 concern the requirements for releasing a precision bred organism. I go back to my mantra—we are pro-science and pro-innovation. We want to find ways to maintain and improve the efficiency, security and safety of our food system, while addressing the environmental and health damage that the modern food system has sometimes created.

In our view, the UK has the opportunity to create a world-leading regulatory framework that others would follow and that provides a clear public good. We recognise that the laws need to be updated to match current scientific understanding, as we talked about earlier. We want our scientists to succeed, and we want them to use their skills for good here in the UK.

To get the legislation right, the Government must balance several risks and benefits. Without consumer and business confidence, we fear we will not see that innovation happening here in the UK and we will not see the subsequent improvements to environmental sustainability and better food security that we all seek.

We want the UK to prioritise innovations that provide public benefit and prosperity. There are so many good examples happening across the country, including in my constituency of Cambridge. The Minister has already referred to the many examples presented to us in the evidence sessions last week. I pay tribute to the passion, expertise and dedication that all those people bring to their work.

I was particularly struck by the evidence given by Bill Angus, in which he noted the motivations behind the work he does as a wheat breeder and as vice-chair of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico, and the passions that drive it. Likewise, Professor Giles Oldroyd gave compelling evidence on the work being done at the University of Cambridge, focusing on improving the sustainability of farming systems and, in particular, removing the need for inorganic fertilizers. Those are clearly areas where gene editing could bring significant benefits for environmental sustainability and in reducing food insecurity across the world. Those should be the innovations that are championed.

However—there is always a “however”—we also heard evidence that while gene editing could be used for good, it could be used for ends that to many of us do not seem so desirable. I found the evidence from Peter Stevenson of Compassion in World Farming very persuasive. Here I am thinking of some of the harmful impacts that, sadly, traditional breeding methods have wrought on different animal species, whether that is farm animals that have been bred to produce high yields, which shortens their lifespan, or companion animals such as dogs, which have been bred to have bodies so small that they can barely sustain their internal organs. There is a risk that the Bill could be used to breed animals in a way that meant they would suffer more or be made to tolerate harsher conditions.

There is widespread agreement across the House that we are proud of the animal welfare and environmental standards that we have in the UK, but we know that not all countries around the world share that ethos or those aims, and that they might have different intentions for these new technologies. The question we pose in our amendments is, how can we ensure that the technology is used for good here in the UK, and who decides what that good might be?

The Bill includes some animal welfare tests, which we welcome—we shall discuss them in more detail later—but that is about it. There is a question in my mind: is development of further herbicide-resistant crops allowing more herbicide to be used, not less, what we really want to see? I do not think so. Are there tests in the Bill to stop that? That is where, again, I worry. I am not convinced, although I am happy for the Minister to point those tests out.

Our amendments propose something more explicit. Amendment 32 would create a public benefit test before precision bred organisms could be authorised and released. An organism would have to have been developed for any of the purposes described in the amendment, and I am sure all members of the Committee agree that that is an excellent list. Sharp-eyed Members might think that they have seen the list before. Labour Members are keen recyclers, and Government Members will be delighted to know that those worthy goals have been lifted from the Agriculture Act 2020. The added benefit is that that makes it all much easier for Conservative Members to support all this. What is not to like in the proposal?

The amendment would ensure that we got the most out of the Bill. As Professor Sarah Hartley of the University of Exeter said in evidence:

“The Bill enables science to develop in this area, but it does not enable us to direct the science and technology towards doing any good. That would require a different form of governance.”––[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill Public Bill Committee, 30 June 2022; c. 123-24, Q193.]

That is the key point, but there is nothing in the Bill to ensure that that will happen. Members might remember the exchange I had with the scientist who is developing the tomato with added vitamin D. I love the enthusiasm of scientists, which is fantastic, but they are great optimists in many ways, and they assume that everyone is, like them, developing positive stuff that will be good for the world. I hate to enlighten them about the fact that there are people out there who do not take exactly the same view.

When making legislation, we have to ensure that, as well as welcoming those who are undoubtedly trying to do good, we guard against those who are not. Amendment 32 would strengthen the Bill, harness the good that can be created through such technologies, and properly encode the Government’s stated aims for the Bill in the text itself.

Amendment 10 concerns the notification requirements for the release of a precision bred organism. The secondary powers in clause 4 are important, as they will specify the information that a notifier is required to disclose before releasing a precision bred organism. That is important not just to ensure that concerned members of the public remain informed, but also for what is termed “co-existence”—the ability of organic growers to maintain the integrity of their product.

We heard evidence from representatives of the organic sector. They made it clear that they cater to a group of people who do not want to see genetically modified or edited organisms in their food. Whatever our wider view of the Bill, I think we can all agree that those people have a right to that choice. With thorough information in release notices, organic farmers can make informed decisions about their crops or animals, take the necessary measures, and track their supply chain. That is an important set of issues, and given the clause’s importance, we believe that any powers created through it should be properly discussed and given proper scrutiny by this House rather than being waved through.

I fear that we will make a number of similar points as we discuss whether legislation should be decided via the negative or the affirmative procedure. It would have been helpful and desirable for the Committee to have had details on the powers, rather than being asked to give the Government a blank cheque to do what they think is best. In the absence of any detail, I think that we should be able to debate and scrutinise the secondary legislation when it is laid before the House. That is what amendment 10 would secure.

Although we will not necessarily press both amendments to a vote, I think amendment 10 is sufficiently significant for us to divide the Committee, but let us see what the Minister says.

[Kerry McCarthy]

In speaking to amendment 32, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge quoted oral evidence. I had a bit of a Twitter conversation with David Rose, professor of sustainable agricultural systems at Cranfield University. He was due to give evidence but could not because of ill health. Professor Rose said that the Government have not considered how the Bill will lead to more sustainable agriculture, and that, although gene editing does have potential, it could, if used badly, make agriculture less sustainable.

Professor Rose posed a number of questions. What is gene editing for? That goes to the very heart of what the Committee is trying to nail. Who benefits? Will it reduce chemical use? Will it facilitate further monoculture? Will it intensify animal protection? The fact that those questions and concerns exist mean that gene editing could be used for good or for bad, so it would be helpful to have a public interest test in the Bill.

The Agriculture Act 2020 contains very clear tests on public money for public good, and establishes quite a clear idea of what is regarded as a public good in food and farming—certainly in how people farm their land, although not so much on the animal side of things. There is concern, however, that the Government are rowing back a little on that agenda as they start to consider how to distribute subsidies to farmers.

As we look at the more technical side of things, it would be good to reiterate that the Government do see that there is a need to promote the public good with regard to this legislation. Sue Pritchard, chief executive of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission—with whom I am sure the Minister is familiar—agreed with Professor Rose, saying that his comments were “consistent” with the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission consultation response; she also agreed that DEFRA must anticipate good and bad consequences. That is our concern: while we have heard lots about the potential, it is just not clear that the safeguards are there against potential misuse of the legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fay Jones (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

Can the hon. Lady provide the Committee with more evidence for her assertion that we are moving to an American or Australian system of farming? None of my farmers want to deviate from any of their world-class standards, so I am curious about where she gets that idea from.

[Kerry McCarthy]

We have seen planning applications, for example, for huge pig farms where there have been lots of concerns about the impact on the local environment. One of the problems is that although those planning applications can be rejected on the grounds of the environmental impact—slurry leaking into the soil and the water supply, for example—they cannot be objected to on animal welfare grounds. There are quite a lot of examples of that happening. I have also been to chicken farms with high numbers of chickens kept in close confinement and a high turnover, as it takes 28 days to bring a chicken up to market weight. My concern is that if gene editing allows us to accelerate that process even further, the sheer number of animals involved could lead to welfare concerns.

There were also some very good arguments that gene editing could reduce the need for antibiotics. It would allow us to deal with disease at source, so we would not have to worry so much about disease spreading. Obviously, reducing antibiotics use would be very good, given the impact it can have on human health if it leaks into our food supply chain. At the same time, though, if we are less worried about disease spreading among animals because we have managed to breed out that concern, that could open the door in some sense to putting an awful lot more animals in close contact and, perhaps, not being as worried about husbandry.

I think it is very good that, for the most part, British farmers do not want to go down that American route. We had that argument over the Agriculture Act and the Trade Act 2021—about protecting standards and trying to support British farmers who do not want to do that. That is a very good thing. However, given the possibility that British farmers will have to compete with imports that are produced to lower standards, there may be some who do want to go down that route. We see that with some food producers because they want to be able to produce more cheaply.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge said, scientists want to do the right thing and use gene editing for the right purposes. By and large, farmers in this country also want to do the right thing and farm to good, sustainable standards. However, if market forces are against them, there will always be the temptation to take advantage of being able to put animals in close contact; there will always be some people who choose to do that. I do not see the harm in trying to have safeguards in the Bill to prevent that. That is not to say that everyone will try if the safeguards are not there.

[David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)]

Further to the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire, I am struggling to see where the evidence is that, through the passage of the Bill, our animal welfare standards, which are covered by other legislation, would somehow be cancelled out.

[Kerry McCarthy]

When we discuss clauses 11 to 13, I might raise some examples of where I am concerned about animal welfare standards. I do not think the farm animal welfare codes are particularly effective. There was concern about seven years ago that the Government wanted to put them on a self-regulatory footing. I need to check what happened with that, because there was public outcry about self-regulation on that front. The Government did a complete U-turn, but I am not sure whether they have tried to do it by stealth in the time since. I have a mental note to check what has happened to that since I played a leading role in trying to stop it being moved to that footing.

There have been undercover exposés filmed at certain farms about the way some animals are treated. I like to think I have a very good relationship with the National Farmers Union and Minette Batters. The vast majority of farmers want to do the right thing, but looking at some of the red tractor farms that are meant to be higher welfare and seeing what is being uncovered as a result of people going and filming, we cannot be complacent. The red tractor mark is meant to be a badge that consumers can trust to mean higher welfare, but there are many examples where they do not seem to have met those standards. That is proof that something is going wrong in the system.

[Deidre Brock]

I draw attention to clause 17, which is about the importation of precision bred organisms into England in this case, although the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 means that it can affect the situation in Scotland, too. I am not clear what kind of monitoring there would be of the gene editing procedures that are taking place in the countries that will be importing those organisms into the UK.

[Kerry McCarthy]

That is a fair point. Hopefully we will come to that when we get to clause 17.

To conclude, Joanna Lewis at the Soil Association talked about this “unhelpful trajectory”, and how that is in conflict with the Government’s goals on the sustainable farming transition. She says:

“We therefore need to ensure that we are not accelerating that trend through carte blanche deregulation.”—[Official Report, Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill Public Bill Committee, 28 June 2022; c. 56, Q92.]

I agree. She goes on to say that there is an opportunity to put good governance at the heart of the Bill, and to get that public interest test in there, which I support.

[Jo Churchill]

Amendment 32, as I understand it, would embed public interest into the Bill. We are very much aligned with the intentions behind the amendment, and are already undertaking a range of work across Government that delivers public good. Some of those have been mentioned. We want precision breeding technologies to deliver real benefits. They are a vital part of toolkit to deliver benefits for our food system and the environment. The hon. Member for Bristol East said—rather, implied—that our farmers were not doing the right thing.

[Kerry McCarthy]

indicated dissent.

[Jo Churchill]

Well, if they are doing the right thing and our researchers are, too, there is no need for that reassurance in the Bill. Throughout the Bill there is the PBO assessment via ACRE on both plants and animals; the animal welfare declaration and the animal advisory body; the PVS varieties listing for plants and seeds; the FSA and the food and feed marketing authorisation to check before food comes to market. There are checks and balances throughout the Bill. We are keen to see those things in the Bill that can deliver good—disease resistance, pest resistance and drought resistance.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Third sitting)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 30th June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Mr Lewis, we are straying from the topic. I have to stop you because I have three other Members who want to remain on topic—Kerry, Andrew Bowie and Katherine Fletcher. We will move on because we have strayed off the topic. I have been very patient and I did let it go on for a little while.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Q On a similar point to Clive’s, I note what Dr Rice said about the virus coming from outside, but from my reading of the syndrome, it spreads by direct contact between animals, as well as by natural breeding, artificial insemination and a variety of other things. There is the concern that the more animals you have in one place, the more likely it is that the disease will spread.

I note that the syndrome was first identified in the States in the late 1980s, and now it has spread worldwide in most swine-producing countries. I would be interested to know your take as to why it has spread to that extent. Is it because there is more intensive farming, in the same way that we saw with things such as bovine TB? I get what you are saying about the farm animal welfare codes, although they are not very well adhered to—there is a separate debate about that. If this would permit more animals to be kept in intensive situations because the virus would not spread, does that not leave the door open to people to argue that that is the path we should be going down?

Dr Lewis: I appreciate the question. We can look at this in a couple of ways. Just as pure history—as I say, it was my pet project with my PhD—the PRRS virus was originally identified in two separate locations at the same time. One was in North America—Minnesota—and one in Lelystad in the Netherlands. It was pretty much simultaneously defined in Europe and the United States. Did the movement of animals globally—breeding stock and so on—facilitate the global spread? I think that is probably fair, but that needs to continue to happen as we move the geneplasm around the world and connect populations.

The number of stock is an interesting question. PRRS is very infectious, so once you have got it into a farm, it does not matter if there are 10 pigs or 100 pigs in the farm; the whole farm is probably going to get it. The way that you look at it is that the barrier to entry into the farm is more important than how many pigs are in the farm. That is why we continue to refine biosecurity practices.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I was talking more about proximity than about numbers.

[Jo Churchill]

Professor Hammond might be interesting on this, because he deals with avian flu, and obviously that might broaden it to the wild community.

[The Chair]

If you want to do that, you have less than a moment. It is for all Members to direct the questions to who they would like to hear answer them.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q It is not so much numbers, but if you have a smaller number of pigs, they tend not to be kept in such close proximity.

Dr Lewis: My final point would be that if we look at gene editing, or genome precision breeding on the other extreme, one of the reasons why we keep animals inside is to protect them from disease, whether it is flu or PRRS. One different way of looking at it is that the use of precision breeding technology could facilitate the extensification of agriculture.

Professor Whitelaw: You have to remember that a virus does not choose which animal it is going to infect. It will infect an animal in whichever farming system it is in. This technology, equally, can benefit all farming systems.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Okay, with two minutes left, is it possible to get Kerry McCarthy and Andrew Bowie in?

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q This will possibly have a one-word answer. We have heard quite a few witnesses say that the farm animal welfare codes are sufficient in terms of regulating some of our concerns bout welfare. This question is particularly for Professor Campbell and Mr Stevenson. Do you think they are adequate?

Peter Stevenson: No, the codes do not address breeding issues in any very clear way, other than sometimes through a broad principle to say, “Yes, be careful how you breed in order not to harm animal welfare.” We have a huge amount of legislation in this country, but just one or perhaps two provisions that deal with breeding, and they are so broadly worded that they have never had any impact on the harms done by selective breeding. To go back to Katherine Fletcher’s point, I think it is vital that there is something in this Bill to protect animal welfare, because the current legislation, as I said, has really very little on breeding, which is why we have all these problems. If this Bill is going ahead—I know it is—let us at least have some good, well-crafted animal welfare protections.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Is not the implication of that that you would be telling the scientists what to do?