Oral Answers to Questions

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

My hon. Friend raises an important and serious matter. I reassure him that I have been working closely with the CPS, which in turn is extremely close to the police, to deal with these very significant issues. The CPS has been embedded in the control rooms during the most serious of the marches that have taken place.

I also reassure my hon. Friend that a large number of prosecutions have already started. Most of the ones that have come to conclusion are necessarily guilty pleas, because prosecutions take time, but we all saw, sadly, a large uptick in that horrible crime after 7 October last year, and we are just starting to get to the phase when trials are beginning where people have not pleaded guilty. I hope he will take some reassurance from my answer and that he will come and see me so that I can talk him through some of the work we are doing.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

Does the Attorney General agree that a key priority for the CPS must be fixing the flawed way that joint enterprise laws are used, and does she agree that no one should ever be convicted of a crime that they made no significant contribution to?

[The Attorney General]

I know the hon. Lady is a long- time campaigner on joint enterprise, and I also know that the Lord Chancellor, my dear friend in this place, has also considered such matters very carefully.

Food Price Inflation

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Kim Johnson.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

I have forgotten my question!

[Mr Speaker]

In that case, I call Barry Sheerman, who always has a question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kim Johnson]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for giving me a second opportunity. The Minister mentioned the number of children accessing free school meals. We have nearly 4 million children living in poverty, so will he explain what assessment he has undertaken of the impact of food price inflation on the delivery of school meals, given that schools receive only £2.41 per pupil and that has increased by only 7p in the past 13 years?

[Mark Spencer]

We are supporting more children now than at any point in history. We continue to offer them that support and we will carry on doing that. School meals are the responsibility of the Department for Education, but we consistently have conversations with our friends across government to make sure that we are co-operating and co-ordinating our approach.

Government Food Strategy

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

The money is already available, and we have already had a number of rounds. Indeed, earlier this year, when we opened a round of the farming investment fund for equipment on farms, it was over-subscribed, so we trebled its budget to £48 million. This week, we have opened a new round to support farmers who want to add value. There is £30 million going into that fund, and there will be many more rounds over the current year or two.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

Food prices are rocketing and food insecurity is increasing, but this White Paper goes nowhere near addressing the root causes of these issues. The recommendation to extend free school meals to more than 1 million children on universal credit has been ignored, so how does the Secretary of State plan to address this, and ensure that our children are well fed and nourished to be able to learn?

[George Eustice]

As I explained earlier, the Chancellor has unveiled a package of measures to help those on the lowest incomes deal with the sharp increase in energy costs. We also have a range of programmes, including Healthy Start and the holiday activities and food programme.

Cost of Living and Food Insecurity

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

We regularly hear in this Chamber about choices between heating and eating. That is a tough reality for many, but it does not have to be like this. The cost of living crisis and food insecurity sit at the Government’s door. Over the last two years, the Government have had to take some serious action to deal with the furlough scheme and the speedy NHS roll-out of the vaccine, and those were indeed the right outcomes. However, the £4.3 billion in covid loans written off by the Treasury as wasted money, the £37 billion wasted on track and trace and the Government contracts given to their mates are all unacceptable. While public money is not being managed well by the Government, we have seen individuals and families attending food banks and asking for food that they do not have to cook, so that they do not have to use their ovens. Imagine it—no heating, no hot food and no excess money to buy white goods, furniture or clothes. Universal credit just does not go far enough.

Low-wage earners are squeezed to the maximum. They are experiencing rises in private rents, in fuel prices, in national insurance contributions and, of course, in food prices. Universal credit has been reduced at a time when it is needed the most. The Salvation Army in Catford has said:

“Money is not going as far as it should be to cover all expenses.”

We know that, but the question is: do the Government care? If they care, what are they doing about it? The Government have a track record of increasing poverty, or poverty being increased while they are in government.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that it is an outrage that this Government have just voted for a real-terms cut to social security and pension payments while giving the bankers a £1 billion tax cut?

[Janet Daby]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government’s track record is one where they are not doing what is needed for people in poverty and experiencing poverty. They are actually helping their own, and that comes down to one rule for them and another rule for everyone else.

The Government are not fit to govern our country due to their failed promises and decisions time and again. The Prime Minister promised that we would take back control when we leave the EU, with lower fuel prices, control of gas and oil and having more to invest in our NHS, but this could not be further from the truth. There are solutions to eradicate the burden of hunger and improve the standard of living to keep families warm and fed, but this Government lack the political will to do so.

Environment Bill

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP) [V]]

I welcome the opportunity to speak to the Government amendments that were made in Committee to clarify the enforcement powers in England of the Office for Environmental Protection, and particularly the fact that further amendments will be made to ensure that they remain aligned with the OEP functions in Northern Ireland. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that that will be the case. I am aware that there has been co-operation with Northern Ireland Ministers, who have requested that these amendments also be made in relation to Northern Ireland, but I welcome their inclusion and this alignment. If only we could see something similar in all aspects of our governance, such as trade, we would be in a much healthier position, with full shelves—but perhaps that is another debate for another day.

I endorse the comments of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) about plastic pollution, and I request, as he did, that Ministers and Government make a concerted effort to maintain the reduction of plastic pollution. Although we have seen a lot of reduction, we still need more. Enforceability is always a concern of mine. It is right and proper that we introduce greater, more effective legislation, but it is no use unless there is no doubt about the interpretation of the OEP enforcement provisions and the courts’ ability to grant remedies. Many of us would like to ensure that there is no doubt that the courts can and will enforce the Bill’s provisions.

I am a country sports enthusiast, as I am sure the Minister knows, and part of my being a country sports enthusiast is a dedication and commitment to conservation. That is why the Bill is important; it is an essential component of our moving forward, and that is what I always seek to ensure. It is right and proper that there is a legislative obligation to think about environmental principles and I welcome this addition.

However, some constituents have made it clear that they believe the Bill does not go far enough. I seek further clarification from the Minister. Would she be so kind, during her summing up, to outline the rationale behind excluding defence and procurement from these obligations? Every Government Department should play its part. Whilst it should not be the priority of Defence to think of the economy first—the safety of the nation is first—my constituents believe there could still be an obligation to give consideration to the impact within the process of reaching decisions.

I speak as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for healthy homes and buildings. When it comes to the environment, we believe that more could be done to ensure that Government works with developers to help ensure that new projects are much more sustainable. For example, instead of a developer being responsible for the full price of sewer works, and putting in the least that can be expected to enable them to turn a profit, surely Government or local council assistance to put in long-term environmentally sustainable, more costly infrastructure will benefit us all. I also want to put in a word for the importance of air quality, insulation, heating and play areas—the improvement of all buildings in the future.

I am conscious that the Minister has a lot on her plate—a lot of questions to answer—but I thank her for the time and hope she can take these points on board.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]]

I would like to start by thanking my constituents who have contributed to this debate by sending me emails.

We are in a climate and ecological emergency. Considering the scale and urgency of the crisis we are facing, it is staggering that the Government have seen fit to postpone the Bill yet again. We have a responsibility to take rapid and radical action towards sustainability and environmental protection. Delaying this core piece of legislation is a major setback to that work. In the run-up to hosting COP26 later this year, the Bill should be an absolute priority, as should commitment to maintaining and enhancing environmental protection. That it is not, speaks volumes about the commitment of this Government to the environment, to our global responsibilities and to future generations.

The Bill, as it stands, has been called a missed opportunity by the Environmental Audit Committee, and has failed to enshrine action on climate change at the heart of Government policy. Environmental campaigners and organisations across the board have been clear that we need ambitious targets, enforced by a fully independent watchdog, with significant powers to actively dissuade the contravention of environmental legislation. However, if the watchdog is to be effective, it must be capable of holding the Government to account, and that means full independence and serious powers to prosecute and impose financial penalties. The Bill currently allows the OEP to be guided by the Secretary of State, threatening to turn it from a watchdog into a lapdog.

I support many of the various amendments that have been tabled today to strengthen the Bill, including amendment 23, which would ensure the independence of the OEP. With the extra time we now have due to the postponement of the Bill, we could go even further. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will take on board the recommendations of countless environmental campaign groups, endless research projects and recognition by the UN itself that the environmental crisis cannot be tackled without powerful legislation and a fundamental rethink of our economic strategy?

The Bill must take the opportunity to put forward a radical vision that puts climate justice and sustainability at the heart of government through a massive programme of investment and regulation, to offer every worker in high-carbon and unsustainable industries the option of retraining, and to be relocated into high-skill, high-wage jobs in their own communities, from insulating houses to green tech to expanding public transport. “Redeployment not redundancies” must be the strategy. The working class must not pay the price for the corporate greed ravaging the Earth. Instead, strategic support and investment must be undertaken to protect both people and planet, clamp down on tax avoidance and use the income to generate sustainable jobs and invest in a carbon-zero economy. Tinkering at the edges is not an option; the Government must take the rapid and radical action needed to get a grip.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab) [V]]

I will be voting in favour of amendment 25 to the Environment Bill, to embed World Health Organisation targets on air quality; amendment 23, to ensure the Office for Environmental Protection is truly independent; and new clause 9, to enforce commitments to protect biodiversity, health and wellbeing, and the sustainable use of resources. However, due to time constraints, I will focus on Labour’s amendment 39, and the importance of Parliament scrutinising the granting of any exemptions for the use of banned pesticides.

I share the concerns of my Luton South constituents who have contacted me, and the more than 50,000 people who have signed the Wildlife Trust’s petition about protecting bees from the use of neonicotinoids. Their existence is too important to the functioning and survival of ecosystems, so the protection of bees is non-negotiable. It is important to recognise, though, that bees are not just in rural areas: the bees in Luton South produce the delicious High Town Honey just around the corner from me, which has won several prizes at the Bedfordshire Beekeepers Association honey show. The decline of bees will have a disastrous impact on food security. Bees pollinate around 70% of the fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds we eat, but in the UK 13 bee species are already extinct, and one in 10 of Europe’s wild bee species is under threat.

The Secretary of State has authorised farmers to use neonicotinoids on sugar beet crops, even though it is widely recognised that they kill bees. The Government’s justification that sugar beet is not a flowering crop, and therefore the risk is acceptable, does not stand up to scrutiny. A similar application for the use of neonicotinoids in 2018 was refused by the UK Expert Committee on Pesticides because of “unacceptable environmental risks.” This is not to say that overall, I do not recognise the genuine concerns of sugar beet growers across the east of England, but the Government should back farmers to help create a sustainable solution through better support for the sector, accelerating the introduction of blight-resistant crops, and including allowances for crop loss in next year’s sugar contracts.

The Government’s decision to allow the use of banned pesticides has too big a consequence for there to be no parliamentary scrutiny. The emergency authorisation of pesticides must never become common practice. The Government have a clear choice today: vote to speed up the decline of our bee population, or uphold the ban, allow parliamentary scrutiny of future exemptions, and save our bees.

Agriculture Bill

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 12th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

I come from a farming background. It was all I was ever interested in at school. I grew up on a farm where my dad was a farm worker and I had a passion for dairy cows—Holsteins. When I was thinking of future careers, the only green in my life was the grass that the cows ate in the fields rather than the Benches I now sit on. This is something that goes through my veins. Representing a rural constituency like Moray makes it a hugely important issue for me, both locally and nationally.

I want to say from the outset that this debate is not about chlorine-washed chicken or hormone-injected beef, which are banned in this country and will continue to be banned in this country going forward. There have been scare stories in the media and throughout the debate, which I have watched from the office and then, when seats became available, in the Chamber. We have to get past that. This is also about what our Moray, our Scottish and our UK farmers have done for years and through generations in building up their world-leading and respected animal welfare and food safety standards. They have done so much, through generations of farmers, to build up the reputation that we now proudly have as a country.

I know how passionate the Minister is about upholding these standards, as I saw when watching her opening remarks. Indeed, that passion is shared by those right across the Conservative Benches. We were all elected on a manifesto commitment to uphold those standards. I know that every single Conservative Member believes that and continues to believe it, no matter how they vote tonight. For some, it will be delivered through an unamended Bill because, they will rightly say, the Minister has said, and repeated Ministers and, indeed, the Prime Minister have said, that this Bill does not reduce animal welfare or food safety standards. Others on the Conservative Benches and around the House will say that it needs to be enshrined in law and put into the Bill. I do not believe that either is wrong. We all want to get to the same destination, but we could potentially take different routes. Some may choose the unamended Bill to uphold animal welfare and food safety standards, and others will choose to amend the Bill, as amendments 16 states, to call for agriculture and food imports to meet domestic standards.

The passion that we all have to meet that ultimate aim is shared; it is just that the route to get to the destination is different. Having thought long and hard about this, I have decided that the best way to do that—the best way to stand up for my Moray farmers, Scottish farmers, and farmers around the country—is to get this measure into the Bill. I agree with and support amendment 16 because I want to make it absolutely crystal clear to farmers up and down the country—to send them the message—that the Government, and I, as the local MP in Moray, have their back and will support them in continuing their efforts to uphold the outstanding standards that they have built up through years and generations.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

In their 2019 manifesto, the Conservatives promised not to compromise on food standards in future trade negotiations, saying:

“In all of our trade negotiations, we will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards.”

They have not put this commitment into law. The Bill does nothing to prevent British farmers from being undercut in post-Brexit trade deals with countries with lower animal welfare, environmental and food safety standards. The Government argue that all current legal protections have been carried over by the EU (Withdrawal) Act as retained EU law, including bans on chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef, but this can be overturned in secondary legislation without adequate parliamentary scrutiny.

Our membership of the EU kept our food standards high, but we are currently negotiating with other countries whose standards are substantially lower than those in the UK. These products include chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef from countries such as the US and Australia. Australia still uses farming methods that are currently illegal in the UK. Hormone-injected beef, for example, is currently banned under EU law due to concerns about public health as well as animal welfare, yet the US and Australia are reputed to be pushing for the UK to accept imports of hormone-injected beef. Chlorinated chicken masks salmonella and E. coli, and causes poor animal welfare conditions in barns and abattoirs. Negotiations are left wide open to pressure on Ministers to use their powers to relax standards. Without a clear and unequivocal guarantee in an Act of Parliament, the Tories’ manifesto promise is worthless. The US and other countries have made it clear that they will expect the Government to accept lower-standard foods currently banned in the UK and the EU such as chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef.

The temporary Trade and Agriculture Commission that the Government have established in response will produce only one advisory report and not a continuous assessment of individual trade deals. Its terms of reference should be widened so that it is able to review all trade deals, in a meaningful way, and its recommendations should be made subject to parliamentary scrutiny. I support Lords amendment 18, which would put the commission on a statutory and permanent basis.

Fisheries Bill [Lords]

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Ways and Means resolution & 2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 1st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

Although my constituency includes the waterfront of the River Mersey, we are not a fishing constituency, but the largest number of petitions from my constituents was against supertrawlers being allowed to fish in our marine protected areas. In Britain, supertrawlers, big boats and larger fishing interests are pushing out the smaller and more environmentally friendly vessels on which local communities and economies rely. A Greenpeace investigation has revealed that, in the first six months of 2020, supertrawlers spent over 5,000 hours fishing in protected areas. These areas are meant to safeguard vulnerable marine habitats. Instead, these habitats were threatened by highly destructive industrial fishing methods, including electric pulse trawlers and trawlers that drag nets along the seabed. If this Government are going to live up to their title of global ocean champion, they must act and act fast.

Under the common fisheries policy, EU fishing vessels landed more fish from UK waters than UK vessels landed from EU waters. Between 2012 and 2016, EU state vessels annually landed fish worth £575 million caught in UK waters compared with UK vessels landing only £96 million-worth of fish caught in the waters of other member states. As we prepare to leave the EU common fisheries policy, the UK has the opportunity to regulate our coastal waters, ban destructive industrial fishing from our MPAs and strengthen marine protection. These areas are not designated protection areas for nothing.

If we are to end overfishing and to create a sustainable fishing policy, we need to move away from the supertrawlers and large-scale fleets to smaller boats, because small boats are the backbone of the British fishing fleet and they deserve the lion’s share of fish caught under the UK quota. For every fish caught, the small-scale fleet creates more jobs than larger boats. Smaller boat owners have suffered huge financial uncertainty during covid-19. For many, the biggest part of their business is their boat, which still needs to be maintained, even if the business cannot operate. The Government need to commit resources to this industry, alongside coastal communities, to ensure not just their survival, but their growth.

Small fishers were unable to adapt to the upheavals caused by the covid-19 crisis as, throughout the lockdown period, their quota allocations for the fish they catch remained unchanged. If we are to develop a sustainable and environmentally beneficial fishing policy, we need to turn to the smaller fleets, which create local jobs, are less harmful to the marine environment and can ensure more fish are landed in the UK. That is why I am supporting clause 27, requiring a minimum quota for new entrants to the sector whose boats are 10 metres or under, plus clause 1(3) on the sustainability objective and clause 18 on the establishment of a national landing requirement to support small fishers and the coastal communities they serve by ensuring that a minimum percentage of fish caught by both domestic and foreign fishing vessels in UK waters are then landed at a UK port.