Environment Bill

Laura Farris Excerpts

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

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

Thank you for calling me from Huddersfield, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have been involved in the environmental campaigning sector for all my political parliamentary career, and I have learned the hard lesson that if we do not have good science working purposefully in partnership with the private sector right across the spectrum and building coalitions, we do not get the action that we need.

Today, I am saddened that there will be a further delay in the Environment Bill coming into a living reality. I believe that it is the right of children and all of us in this country to breathe clean air, to have pure water, to be able to swim in the rivers and streams, and to have healthy soil that has not been contaminated and degraded. We could achieve some good purposes in partnership, and I call for that partnership to have great leadership. Sometimes I am not sure whether there is enough purpose, partnership and leadership in this present Government. I remember too many articles in a certain well-known magazine, The Spectator, which always seems to feature climate change doubters. The fact of the matter is that many of them have been proven absolutely wrong by good science and the work led by David Attenborough.

We need to do things at home, in our constituencies. As chair of the Westminster Commission for Road Air Quality, I can tell the House today that we are launching a constituency service that gives the quality of air in every constituency, along with the number of electric vehicles, the number of charging points and a whole range of criteria, so that Members know just how the polluted air in their constituencies is affecting their constituents.

We need to roll up our sleeves and get this sorted out. When I came into Parliament, we were known as the dirty person of Europe, and we were burying all our waste in holes in the ground. We have moved on through good science, good partnership and working together. I am an optimist and I think we can sort climate change, but we will not do it unless we get purposeful and determined leadership in this country.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con) [V]]

This Bill is so much more than the sum of its parts. It is best described as a prism through which the panoply of wider environmental policies, many of which will be a key part of the covid recovery response, should be viewed. Whether we are talking about phasing out petrol vehicles, encouraging cycling or planting trees, this Bill creates the framework through which targets can be set and the environmental benefits can be measured. For the first time, air quality and water quality are not just afterthoughts but are at the heart of policy making.

I want to pay tribute to some of the environmental groups in my constituency: Action for the River Kennet for the transformational work that it has done on chalk streams, and the West Berkshire Climate Action Network and the West Berkshire Green Exchange for all that they do.

First, I would like to address water quality. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) for his private Member’s Bill, which places statutory obligations on water companies that are discharging sewage into rivers. Obviously, his private Member’s Bill dovetails neatly with amendments 3 and 42, proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker). Although the Government have not said exactly what they want on this, I am very grateful to the Minister for her correspondence last night and her general tone, which makes it clear that the Government are in broad agreement.

This is an issue that is very close to my heart. In the last year, we have had terrible flooding in the eastern part of my constituency at Eastbury, but particularly Lambourn, where sewage has floated up to the road surface, run along a road past the children’s school and then flowed freely into the River Lambourn, which is one of our most treasured chalk streams. One of my early experiences as a new MP was just how difficult I found it to get any real remedy for my constituents when that happened.

Finally, I would like to talk about air pollution, which we know poses the biggest environmental hazard to public health. I understand the sentiment that sits behind new clause 6, which was proposed by the Opposition, asking the Government to publish an annual policy statement setting out what they and local authorities plan to do, but I think it is superfluous for three reasons. First, setting targets is already embedded in clauses 1 and 2 of the Bill. Secondly, the Secretary of State already creates an obligation on themselves to declare whether the significant improvement test in relation to air quality has been met under clause 8. Finally, there is the establishment of the Office for Environmental Protection, which is not just an oversight body, but has real teeth and powers of enforcement, so the Government are not marking their own homework in this regard.