European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely can. One of the opportunities that the citizens of Northern Ireland would have as a result of the deal is unimpeded access not just to the rest of the UK market, which is essential for the maintenance of our Union, but to the rest of the EU. That is why the Ulster Farmers’ Union, Ulster business and so many in Northern Ireland’s civil society have said that, with all its imperfections, the deal protects not only the integrity of the UK, but their livelihoods, jobs and futures.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend mentioned the Ulster Farmers’ Union. Has he had time today to see the letter written by the presidents of all four farmers unions to every Member setting out quite clearly why no deal would be so damaging to the interests of rural communities?

[Michael Gove]

I have read that letter. It has been sent to every Member, and I would ask every Member to give it close attention. Our farming communities, like our country, were split over whether to leave. A majority of farmers voted to leave, recognising the opportunities that being outside the CAP would present, but I have yet to meet a single farmer who believes that a no-deal Brexit would be the right option for this country when the withdrawal agreement in front of us provides the opportunity for tariff-free and quota-free access for agricultural products to the EU.

I will say a bit more about the specific challenges of a no-deal Brexit. It is an intellectually consistent position, but it is important, even as we apprise it and pay respect to its advocates, that we also recognise the real turbulence that would be caused, at least in the short and medium term, to many of our farmers and food producers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

I should start by reflecting that the speech by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) was one of the finest analyses of what happened in the referendum. The right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) also absolutely hit the nail on the head about where we are today and how we need to progress.

We have heard, and will continue to hear in this debate, reasons why people feel they cannot support the Government’s deal. We will hear hon. Member after hon. Member describe in gruesome detail what precise strand of Brexit or non-Brexit they will support. That will be all very fascinating for their local paper or grist to the mill for their next blog, but in the context of what Parliament is doing in this debate and in next week’s vote it will be utterly irrelevant. What matters is not what any of us individually think of the deal; what matters is what Members in the Chamber decide. What matters is the maths of who makes up this House.

I am happy to give detailed reasoning to the House for why I am prepared to support the Government. That would be of interest to some of my constituents. It would be welcome news to my constituent who runs a business which employs over 20,000 people and is pleading with us to agree the deal. It would be interesting to the small businesses in my constituency that wrote to me about why ideological Brexiteers are playing with fire when they breezily claim that no deal would be just a bit of mid-air turbulence. We should listen to such people and ask ourselves who is more likely than them to understand the complexity of supply chains or the competitive pricing of their products.

For some in this House the word “compromise” is a pejorative term: a sign of weakness and a word which is too quickly followed by other words like “betrayal”. For me, compromise is almost always a virtue. I compromised as a soldier serving on operations. I compromised as a businessman in every negotiation I did. I compromised as a Minister when negotiating in Europe for this country. I compromise almost daily in this place trying to get some of what I want through, rather than getting nothing. Perhaps the best analogy I can use is that I compromised when I got divorced. As one hon. Member said outside this Chamber the other day, “At least his divorce was with only one person, not 27.”

As the leading Brexit campaigner Dan Hannan wrote recently, if a 52% to 48% referendum result is a mandate for anything, it is a mandate for compromise. That said, like most in this House I am a democrat and I concede that my side lost. Like about 85% of this House, I was re-elected in 2017—I might add, with the highest ever popular vote in my constituency in any general election—on a manifesto that pledged to respect the result of the referendum. If we look at the bell curve of public opinion on this issue, we see the edges of the bell curve showing the irreconcilables, the small percentage at either end who are either inexorably grieving at the result of the referendum and will do anything they can to undo it, or those for whom the cleanest of breaks with the EU is a theocracy and an ideology on which, as with the other end of the scale, compromise is impossible. And then there is the rest of the country. Here we find an understanding about what we want to achieve: to move from being a country inside the EU with some opt-outs, to one being outside the EU with some opt-ins. For many of them, this deal is fine. I support the Prime Minister if she can bring forward any changes and tweaks that will encourage more of our colleagues to join. I also give notice that if that fails I will seek, with other colleagues right across the House, to find a way forward. If that takes me down an EEA or EFTA route, then I will look at that. That would be sub-optimal, but it may be the only thing the House can agree. What I do feel is that there is no majority in this House for no deal. I really urge people to listen to industry and to the letter we received today from the four presidents of the NFU. If one represents a rural area and minds about our food industry and the rural economy, that letter is calm, deliberate knowledge.

In the spirit of compromise, and to ensure there is something for all of us, I am really attracted by the idea that, perhaps on workers’ rights, the environment, and health and safety, we could provide a sort of triple lock where if Europe decides to raise standards above where we are today we can say that we will put them to this House. We are a sovereign House of Commons. We can make a decision on whether to support them. I am interested in that.

I wish to say a word to those who want a second vote. If someone is calling for it because they see it as the best way of reversing the first referendum, say so—be honest with the public and do not dress it up with some higher purpose. In passing, I would also say: be careful what you wish for. The further one gets from London and its bien pensant elites, the more one detects an anger and belligerence towards the campaign for a second referendum. The Institute for Government has said it would take four to five months to have a second referendum. We would be putting this poor country through another four or five months of the kind of divisions we saw in the last one. Is that what we really want? The Electoral Commission, the independent body that oversees such votes, has very strong views on some of the points being made about the kind of questions that might be asked.

My discussions with some of the 97% of my constituents who have not written to me on this issue can be condensed down to one simple message: get on with it.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman also accept, though, that if the House were to support the Government’s deal, along with the political declaration, it would be a sure fire way of ensuring that this uncertainty and political wrangling continue for years to come?

[Richard Benyon]

I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It will give certainty. It would certainly give certainty to many of the businesses I have talked about. I think there is a dam holding back investment in the economy. We all see it in our constituencies. If the deal were to go through, I think we would see a mini-boom in this country, as well as a determination to close this off in the minds of the electorate by trying to speed through the final stage of negotiations. If there is another emotion I detect in my constituency, it is one of admiration for the tenacity of the Prime Minister. While not everyone will agree with what she has come up with, I think we can all accept that.

I will finish with a heartfelt plea to people right across the House not to stand absolutely on the principle and clear position of what they would accept, but to recognise that the House of Commons has to raise its game, understand that compromise is not a dirty word and find a solution that we can all agree.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Fisheries Bill

Lord Benyon Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 21st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend knows what she is talking about, and she is absolutely right. The Scottish National party wants us to stay in the European Union, and therefore in the common fisheries policy, and the Scottish National party’s MEPs, when given the chance to vote in the European Parliament, voted to stay in the common fisheries policy. However, I do want to acknowledge that there are independent members of the SNP who do not toe the line of their leadership. There are individual voters who have lent the SNP their votes in the past but who do not agree with that view. Also, to be fair, the Scottish Government and the Minister responsible, Fergus Ewing, in helping to ensure that this legislation can work for Scotland, have operated in a constructive manner, as indeed have officials in the devolved Administrations—sadly, we do not have the Executive in Northern Ireland, but the officials there have negotiated in good faith, as have the Labour Administration in Cardiff. I want to underline that the legislation we bring forward will see powers moving to the devolved Administrations. It will be a diffusion of power and a strengthening of devolution.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

Many individuals and organisations campaigned very hard to get the firmest rules on sustainability as part of reform of the common fisheries policy. Will my right hon. Friend give them an assurance that any vessel fishing in British waters after we leave the European Union will be required to maintain the highest levels of sustainability for those fish stocks and to work with the Government to do so?

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Bill makes it clear that there are principles, to which the Government will be held, that ensure that fishing will be sustainable and that our marine environment will be restored to full health. The Bill will give the Government powers to ensure that no vessel can fish in our waters unless it adheres to those high environmental standards.

Draft Infrastructure Planning (Water Resources) (England) Order 2018

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2018 General Committees

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I will take a few moments of the Committee’s time to consider some vital facts here. When my hon. Friend the Minister’s boss was appointed as Secretary of State, I took him aside in the Lobby and said to him, “Do you realise, Michael, that if it doesn’t rain over the coming winter,”—this was about a year ago—“you will be in Cobra in the spring?” His eyes narrowed, as if to say, “What on earth is this man talking about?”, but six years after the last serious drought, we faced a very serious problem, and just about escaped it; our “get out of jail free” card was a fairly wet end to last winter.

What was a 30-year cycle now seems to be a six or seven-year cycle, which sees people such as my hon. Friend the Minister receiving into her office ashen-faced members of the Environment Agency and other organisations, saying, “Look, Minister, we have a problem.” Groups are convened and all sorts of good things are done with different stakeholders, but it does not deal with the major problem.

Yes, there are issues around leakage, which can be resolved. Technology is helping in a big way there; the relentless push on this by the Minister and her colleagues at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is important, and Ofwat’s work on this is vital, but it does not take us away from the problem, which the hon. Member for Pontypridd put very clearly, that we need to look again at winter storage on a grand scale.

Like my neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage, I am not particularly for or against a particular solution here, but I want the Government to be really clear in driving forward the need for large-scale winter storage. I have looked into the eyes of water companies, not least on the Thames Tideway tunnel project, and I can tell the Committee that they do not want to do this. There is this idea that they are lining the pockets of their shareholders through big regulatory capital value items, from which they can skim off large sums of money. They do not want to do that, but they are concerned that in the fifth-largest economy in the world, they will be responsible for standpipes in the streets of a global city such as London. We need to work with them to make sure that we do this a lot quicker.

Will the Minister please have a word with other parts of Government, such as BEIS and those responsible for industrial strategy? Can she make them think that water is important? The industrial strategy challenge fund is a fantastic Government initiative that promotes certain sectors, but it does not treat water as important. A Faraday-style challenge could produce new and innovative techniques that would halve leakage and encourage the development of all sorts of technologies around aquifer recharge, but it is just not important out there.

The Minister and her Department can do an enormous amount, particularly given what will be going on in six months or so. After that, we will be in the driving seat in taking forward the son of the water framework directive and the son of the urban waste water treatment directive, as well as all the other areas of environmental management that we will be taking control of. Water is absolutely the basis of the continuance of our economy in a very competitive age, and the Minister has an enormous responsibility to take the matter forward. The order represents an excellent start, but I hope that she can get that message across to the rest of Government.

Agriculture Bill

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

When I was a Minister at DEFRA, I was quite shocked by some people—even those who were quite senior in the local national park—who had an aggressive attitude towards precisely the kind of farmers that the hon. Gentleman is talking about. Rewilding has its place in certain areas, but a landscape that has been farmed and created by human beings since the time of the Norse people surely needs to be supported, not attacked, by those who have responsibility for it.

[Tim Farron]

I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. The importance of recognising that our landscape is as diverse as it is because it is managed and maintained is huge. He makes a very good point.

In my view, the Bill should state that traditional hill farming and commoning are a public good. This finely balanced system is at risk and will disappear without explicit public investment. When hill farmers have made changes to how they work to benefit the environment they should be rewarded for that too, but there must be a baseline payment, equivalent at least to the old hill farm allowance, so that they can have security and stability in the long term.

I want the Government to understand not just what farmers do but why they do it. Their chief motivation and purpose is to produce food. We think too little about food security: some 45% of the food we consume today is imported, whereas 20 years ago that figure was more like 35%. That is a very worrying trend. If UK farmers’ ability to compete is further undermined, that will only get worse.

If farmers got a fair price for their produce, there would be no need for direct payments and farmers would not want them. That is not the case—not even close. The food market is so warped by the power of supermarkets that removing direct payments to farmers could leave them entirely at the mercy of the forces of that skewed market, so the powers and scope of the Groceries Code Adjudicator must be vastly expanded to ensure an effective referee on this extremely uneven playing field.

I know it is not an either/or, but the Government should be strengthening the Groceries Code Adjudicator, not, as they propose to do in the Bill, strengthening the failing and discredited Rural Payments Agency. The Government’s proposal to phase out direct payments without a guarantee of an immediate and equivalent replacement is unwise and will not work, either for hill farmers or the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I welcome the Bill. When the coalition Government were formed in 2010, I recall that the Government’s chief scientific officer spoke to us about the possible perfect storm of shortages of food, energy and water all at the same time. Farmers are in the lucky position of being able to provide all three, and the medium to long-term opportunities for agriculture in this country are very good. I hope that the Bill will set us on a path to farmers being able to achieve that in a way that is connected to the market as much as is possible, rather than requiring recourse to the taxpayer.

Let me start by talking about clause 1. Many hon. Members have made the good point that it contains no mention of food production as a public good, but I urge a bit of caution there, as the argument of agriculture can be weakened in terms of other parts of the food industry and other sectors in the economy. It is much more important to talk about food security, and the public good of producing healthy food with high animal welfare and environmental standards. That is much more connected to the aspirations of the public than talking about just the production of food.

The Government should take credit for the 25-year environment plan, which is an excellent document. I want to see its themes running right through this Bill as we get into its detail and the statutory instruments that flow from it. I am also extremely proud of the natural environment White Paper, which was produced in 2011. It did a number of things, including hard-wiring the concept of natural capital into our thinking right across government. Natural capital is not only something that should appeal to the environmentalists among us, but good business. As a farmer, I am carrying out a natural capital audit of the land for which I am responsible not just because I want to know what I am doing well and whether there are improvements to make, but because I want to use it as a baseline from which I can show the public that I am making the improvements that they need.

That brings me on to one of the most important factors: the concept of “water first”. DEFRA asked me to chair the UK Water Partnership, which we are taking forward. Basically, if we are doing the right thing for water, everything else environmentally and for those businesses that depend on the environment falls very quickly into place. I commend the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), the Chair of the Environment Audit Committee, for mentioning the four parts per 1,000 initiative. If we are doing the right things for water, we are doing the right things for soil. That means that soil is locking up carbon and being retained for future generations. That is good business as well as good environmental management.

In the short time that I have left, I want to refer to a very important theme in the Bill. When we talk about agriculture, we need to remind ourselves that the second part of that word is “culture”, and culture is all about the human element of farming. We have heard eloquent speeches today about the beauty of the landscape. Many billions of pounds are made by industries such as tourism on the basis of human interventions in our countryside that go back centuries. That is apparent even in our wildlife. Barn owls, corn buntings and field mice are species that developed because the landscape was managed. We need to encourage the next generation of farmers to be the great land managers of the future.

I hope that I have read the Bill correctly and that it includes an element that will allow those who have come to the end of their farming career to make way for the new generation. I am hugely impressed by the young generation of farmers I meet. The people whom I met at the south of England show last Sunday were getting awards for really innovative thinking. They are the ones I want to see managing the land in the future. It is unkind to call farmers “bed blockers”, but there are some who want to retire and to be given the incentives to do so. If I have read this Bill correctly—I hope the Minister will give us some assurances—it implements mechanisms that will allow long-term farmers to retire with dignity, making way for a new breed of entrepreneurial land managers who can cope with the difficult environmental problems of the future and make a contribution to agriculture in our country.

Sustainable Fisheries

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I thank the hon. Lady for her generous welcome of so much of the White Paper. I thank her, too, for reflecting on its optimistic tone, which reflects the sunny disposition that is always there in DEFRA Ministers’ statements.

The hon. Lady asked what we have already achieved. Not only have we already achieved withdrawal from the London fisheries convention, but we have made it clear, as has the European Union, that although we of course will have a transition process, in the December 2020 Council—that is, even before the transition process ends—the UK will be treated as an independent coastal state and will negotiate as a third country. The European Union acknowledges that we will be leaving and negotiating separately at that point, and that is something that the whole House, and certainly the Opposition, can welcome.

The hon. Lady referred to the fact that 70% of the fish that we catch is exported, and of course it is, because, as I mentioned in my statement, it is high-quality fish caught by the brave men and women who go to sea. We will of course ensure through our future economic partnership, which is being negotiated separately, that we continue to have as-frictionless-as-possible access to European markets. Michel Barnier, someone whom I hugely admire, has himself pointed out that he wants to ensure that the free trade agreement that is concluded between the UK and the EU has neither quotas nor tariffs, so we can look forward to a bright future there, as well.

The hon. Lady mentioned national marine parks. That sounds like a great idea, but while Labour has been talking in the abstract about national marine parks, the Government have been getting on with the hard work of designating and protecting new marine protected areas around our coastline. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) has built on the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) to show how a Government who are absolutely committed to instituting appropriate protection for our coastline can make a real difference.

The hon. Lady was quite right to mention the under-10 metre fleet. As I mentioned in my statement and as is made clear in the White Paper, we want to ensure that new fishing opportunities are allocated in a way that supports that fleet, but, again following the steps undertaken by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury when he was Fisheries Minister, quota has already been reallocated to support the under-10 metre fleet.

I wish to make one final point, which I suspect I may make a couple of times this afternoon. These opportunities arise as a result of our departure from the common fisheries policy. When an opportunity was given to vote for absence and departure from the common fisheries policy in the European Parliament, Labour Members of the European Parliament voted against it. It is all very well to will the end, but unless someone supports the means, which Labour has not done, they are not a true friend of our fishermen.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will know that there is no greater critic of the common fisheries policy than me, but I am sure he would agree that even had we not gone into it, we would probably still have a problem, because man’s technical ability to harvest vast quantities from the sea has been a problem the world over. I very much hope that the White Paper contains a firm commitment to an ecosystems approach to fisheries management and that within that there is the possibility of rebalancing fishing opportunity to try to assist the smaller, more local fishing fleet and give it a fairer cut of the opportunity.

[Michael Gove]

When my right hon. Friend was a DEFRA Minister, he contributed significantly to improvements to the common fisheries policy, and fishing and coastal communities throughout the United Kingdom owe him a particular debt. He is right on both his points: in or out of the CFP, we have to make sure that conservation measures are at the heart of our future policy, and it is also right that we do more, particularly for coastal communities where they use inshore vessels, to ensure that opportunities are reallocated to benefit them and the communities and businesses built around them.

British Flora: Protection from Imported Diseases

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the protection of British flora from imported diseases.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I am extremely grateful to have been granted this debate, particularly as this is such a pertinent issue; the Forestry Commission recently stated:

“The threat to our forests and woodlands has never been greater.”

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and former Mayor of London pledged that 2 million trees would be planted in London between 2009 and 2025. By 2012, I understand only 100,000 had been planted. The current Mayor, Sadiq Khan, promised before his election in May 2016 to plant 2 million trees in his first term, but for some unknown and unwise reason, he abandoned that policy just five months later, in October 2016. Can the Minister cast light on any of that? Can any pressure be brought to bear on all our city mayors to plant more trees? Should that not form part of the Government’s plans to tackle pollution, particularly in our inner cities?

UK imports of live plants have increased by 71% since 1999. There are now more than 1,000 pests and diseases on the UK plant health register. The Royal Horticultural Society has, however, clamped down on imports. All imported semi-mature trees will be held in isolation for 12 months before they are planted at RHS gardens and shows, and evaluation of plant health risk will be incorporated into judging criteria at RHS flower shows. Services relating to our almost 9.3 million acres of forests, woodlands and other trees are estimated to have an annual value of £44.9 billion to the UK economy. Such services include wood processing, recreation and landscaping, as well as biodiversity.

In my part of the world, the beautiful county of Devon in south-west England, a number of diseases have already been found in trees, including phytophthora ramorum, a fungus-like pathogen called a water mould, which has infected large trees widely grown in the UK for the timber market and rhododendrons. Phytophthora ramorum causes extensive damage and death to a large number of trees and other plants.

Red band needle blight, which particularly affects the Corsican pine, is found in most parts of the UK. A five-year moratorium on the planting of the species has been established for Forestry Commission plantations. Here I pay tribute to a fellow Devonian, Sir Harry Studholme, who does such important work as chairman of the Forestry Commission.

Ash dieback is an extremely serious disease of ash trees caused by a fungus. It causes wilting leaves and crown dieback, most usually leading to tree death. Ash dieback was discovered in Devon by the county council, and in February 2016, Natural Devon published a strategy entitled, “Devon ash dieback action plan: an overarching plan to identify and address the risks of ash dieback disease in Devon.” The plan states that there are more than 1.9 million ash trees in Devon, and goes on to say:

“Today we probably have more such trees because many hedges have been permitted to develop into tree lines. The 2012 estimate of nearly half a million roadside ash trees bigger than about 7.5 cm in diameter…confirms that the 1.9 million figure represents only larger trees, and that the true number of non-woodland ash in the county is much greater.”

Finally, sweet chestnut blight was discovered in Devon in December 2016. It is a plant disease caused by the ascomycete fungus, which causes death and dieback in sweet chestnut plants. Restrictions are in place in Devon on the movement of sweet chestnut material.

All of that comes on the back of the change to our landscape. We all remember the devastation that Dutch elm disease caused to the English countryside in the late 1960s and 1970s. That in turn preceded the unprecedented storm of 1987, which uprooted and killed so much woodland. It is unthinkable that we might lose any more of our flora. Act we must.

However, we must give the Government credit here. The Minister will make his remarks later, but I welcome some of the actions taken by the Government and his Department, not least under the stewardship of my former boss in the Northern Ireland Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), when he was Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I am extremely pleased to see him in his place. I believe he intends to catch your eye later, Sir Henry.

The appointment in 2014 of Professor Nicola Spence as a chief plant health officer was a huge step forward. She has invested £4.5 million in new patrols and inspectors, which hopefully will stem the flow of diseases entering the United Kingdom. I also very much welcome the appointment this month of Sir William Worsley as the Government’s tree champion. That appointment meets one of the key commitments in the Government’s 25-year environment plan.

Sir William’s task of driving forward planting rates will help raise awareness of the impact our flora have on our planet. Such action by Government will teach us all further about the impact that diseases have on our environment and our economy. When the Minister gets to his feet, I hope he will confirm that Sir William will be fully resourced—or is he to be just another Government tsar with no power? How will his success be measured? Will he have full access to Ministers? I hope to hear positive answers to those key questions on the role of our excellent new tree champion.

I also very much welcome the work of the Action Oak partnership, supported by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, a man who is always ahead of the curve on all matters environmental. The partnership will, among other things, fund research to improve the understanding of the threats to our oak trees and inform best management practices. I understand that it is looking to raise £15 million. Can the Minister confirm how much has been raised since its launch at last year’s Chelsea flower show and say whether the Government will make a financial contribution to that important project?

One of the common threats is xylella from continental Europe. I pay tribute to Country Life magazine and the RHS for bringing it to my attention. Xylella has not yet reached our shores, but it could pose a severe threat to our flora if it does. It was found in the United States, Taiwan and Italy, where it has destroyed olive groves in the southern part of the country. Subsequently, it has been discovered in Spain, Germany and France, along with some of the Baltic states. According to Mark Griffiths in Country Life, the EU’s reaction to xylella has been “authoritarian”; its vectors have been

“subjected to mass insecticide, an action that has turned plant disease into an ecological disaster”,

through a policy of fighting the disease by eradicating everything that might possibly succumb to it.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the reasons for many of these diseases reaching us are twofold: climate change and the movement of people? Her Majesty’s Government should understand that it is in our economic, social and environmental interest to have as much early warning as possible of such diseases moving up through Europe. Does he agree that we should require our embassies and other agencies to give much earlier warnings as diseases approach, so that we on these islands can develop strategies to tackle them before they get here?

[Sir Hugo Swire]

My right hon. Friend is precisely right. Forewarned is forearmed, and the more we can publicise these impending diseases coming to our islands, the better. He will acknowledge, as a former Environment Minister, that in some respects the problem is already here. It is about how we stop it from spreading and try to contain it where we can. He has a record second to none on environmental matters, and I am extremely pleased that he is here and taking an interest in the debate.

This rather follows on from what my right hon. Friend said: there have been reports that if the British Government were presented with the problem of xylella, they would destroy not only the infected plant, but all plants within a 100-metre radius. I am concerned that that would amount to uprooting parks, gardens and the greenery of entire neighbourhoods. I would appreciate it if the Minister could confirm what action the Government would take in the event of a xylella outbreak in the UK, and what precautions he is taking to prevent such an outbreak.

As in many of our discussions nowadays, the Commonwealth has its part to play, with the invention of the Queen’s Commonwealth canopy. That initiative, which aims to involve all 53 Commonwealth countries and was first conceived by, among others, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), will hopefully save one of the world’s most important natural habitats, forests. Three UK projects are involved: Epping forest, Wentwood in Wales and the national forest, which covers parts of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Staffordshire. Those of us who saw it enjoyed the ITV documentary in April, “The Queen’s Green Planet”, with the legendary Sir David Attenborough, in which Her Majesty the Queen and Sir David discussed the importance of the Queen’s Commonwealth canopy. I particularly look forward to planting a tree in the name of the canopy in Devon in the near future. Will the Minister say what the British Government are doing to raise awareness of and support this Commonwealth initiative?

That leads me on to the defining issue that the United Kingdom faces: leaving the European Union. I am well aware that there is a small amount of irony in the fact that while this debate is about indigenous British flora, many trees and plants in this country are not originally from these shores. Indeed, without our great plant-gatherers of the 18th and 19th centuries, we would not be enjoying many of the trees, shrubs and plants that we have come to know and love. However, I believe that we have a real chance to deliver a green Brexit by ensuring that trading incentives are used to improve biosecurity in trade, including green trade deals. We have a chance to be a pioneering force in having the greenest possible free trade deals, and I hope the Minister will have a positive view of that suggestion.

I commend the millennium seed bank at the royal botanic gardens, Kew, which achieved its initial aim of storing seeds from all the UK’s native plant species in 2009, making Britain the first country in the world to have preserved its botanical heritage. The current phase of the millennium seed bank project is to conserve a quarter of the world’s plant species by 2020. I hope that the Commonwealth, and in particular the Queen’s Commonwealth canopy, will help with the project through their extensive global contacts, and that the British Government will support those efforts.

My hon. Friend the Minister, who represents another wonderful constituency in the south-west, a bit further to the west than mine, will be aware that I always approach these debates with a shopping list. I have some key asks of him this afternoon, which I hope he will address. I welcome the Government’s announcement of £37 million in funding through the tree health resilience strategy. However, how will it be divided up? How much of that money will go to the new tree champion?

Will the Minister commit to tightening up and enforcing more strongly the rules concerning which plant materials can be imported into the UK from the EU and further afield, and how will that be affected once we leave the European Union in March 2019? Could biosecurity be incorporated into any transition deal that the Government agree with Europe? Further to the remarks by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), what instructions can be issued to our embassies and high commissions around the world to identify the threats to the United Kingdom, and some of those plants and trees, to prevent people from trying to export them to the UK?

I am much heartened by the House of Lords EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee’s inquiry on plant and animal biosecurity after Brexit. Will the Government implement the Committee’s recommendations when the report is published, if they are in line with the stated ambition under the 25-year environment strategy and the tree health resilience strategy?

I could go on much longer on this extraordinary subject, but those with greater knowledge of the subject wish to contribute to the debate. I will conclude by saying that many of us spend our recreational time walking the British countryside. It is the envy of the world. How distraught would we be if it were to be further decimated by diseases that killed our flora? I call on us all to act now to protect our green and pleasant land.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to be involved in this very important and timely debate. I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I should also say that I am a trustee of a charity called Plantlife, which is doing a lot of work on invasive species and plant health and trying to encourage wildflowers.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), a former Secretary of State, said, invasive species are costing our economy at least £1.7 billion a year. I remember the plant retailers coming to me, when I was in his Department, to whinge about the increased biosecurity measures that he was rightly implementing. I listened to them, but I am afraid that I just said to them, “Look, you really have got this wrong. Your industry is in part responsible for a devastating effect on our natural environment. You have to face facts: we are now moving into almost a military-style campaign to attack the invasive species and the diseases that are coming to this country, and you have to wise up to it.” They were quite shocked, but I was in turn quite shocked at their lack of biosecurity over decades, at the failure of Governments over decades to implement proper biosecurity, and how we were happy to import nearly all the stock of young trees of certain species that we were planting.

As my right hon. Friend said, we have followed the progression of Chalara as, like Schmallenberg disease and blue tongue, it has progressed across the country. At the weekend, I was looking at a wood in Berkshire and I estimated that about one third of the canopy was ash, and that will be gone in a very short space of time. We can learn from this. We can prevent other diseases that could be devastating to the remaining stock of trees and plants, if we learn from our mistakes in the past. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) is absolutely right to say that.

I hope that the Minister will, in his reply, comment on Action Oak, which is spearheaded by Woodland Heritage. It is based quite near Alice Holt forest, and there is good reason why it should be there and able to build on the information at that centre of excellence. But funding is the key. We welcome the £500,000 that DEFRA promised, but £15 million is needed, and it would be great to know how close we are to getting to that.

Plantlife has identified what it calls its dirty dozen of invasive species, including American skunk-cabbage, broad-leaved bamboo, giant rhubarb, cotoneasters, Himalayan balsam, the Hottentot fig and Japanese knotweed. These invasive species are not only causing huge environmental damage, but creating a huge cost for us to deal with. What my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire did at DEFRA was quite right. He applied a logistician’s approach. I can remember that as a result of foot and mouth, when we had a very serious drought—this was before he was Secretary of State—we developed the same concept as was applied at the time of foot and mouth. It was called birdtable meetings. All the experts were brought in on a regular basis. They were very executive: they were called birdtable meetings because no one sat down—rather like the Privy Council—people just got the business done and then everyone went away and got on with it. I think that that kind of approach is required now to deal with this issue.

Of course, one measure that we need to talk about is husbandry. If dealing with Chalara requires the ash tree to be cut down and burned or taken away, or just cut down at the first sign, that is easy for a larger state or an organisation such as the Forestry Commission, but it is hard for a small farmer or someone with a few ash trees in their garden. Who will take responsibility for encouraging people to do the right thing? It requires a logistician’s approach to dealing with it.

We should beware easy solutions. I remember people coming to see me and saying that we should spray acres of woodland with copper sulphate. Instead of listening to those people, who seemed to have lifted their solutions off the internet, I listened much more readily to the chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who said that that would have a much more malign effect on our biodiversity and plant life.

I, too, have visited New Zealand and Australia. While I was still many thousands of miles away from arriving, I was hit by how hard-wired biosecurity is into every aspect of the travelling experience. The airline and the airport staff are tuned in to it, and there is signage, so it is impossible to move without it being apparent. We need to develop a much more overt and proactive form of biosecurity. I hope the Minister will give us some reassurance about that.

Ivory Bill

Lord Benyon Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely will, because it is incumbent on all of us across the globe to take action. The specific request from African nations could not be clearer, so it is incumbent on us in the United Kingdom, countries in the far east—which often constitute the biggest market for ivory—and also countries like the United States, which has a distinguished global leadership role, to take action; it is incumbent on all of us to play our part as well.

I think there is an appreciation across the House of the importance of the elephant as a species. I mentioned earlier that it is a keystone species: if it were not for the elephant we would not have the means by which we maintain balance in the savannahs and grasslands of Africa. That is in the nature of the role the elephant plays, by the way in which it feeds and—without wanting to go into too much detail in the House—the way in which it excretes. It is important that we make sure that the elephant survives, because without it savannah and grassland would not survive, and without it we would not have species like zebra or like antelope, and without them we would not have the magnificent predators—the charismatic megafauna, the lions and others which feed on those creatures. So by removing the elephant we would not just see one of the most iconic, beautiful and awe-inspiring species with which we share this planet disappear; we would also unloose upon Africa a cascade effect of environmental degradation and damage that I think none of us could possibly countenance.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making a very important point about the pyramid of biodiversity that is protected when one protects the megafauna at the top, but does he agree that conservation of the elephant is essentially a human interface that we have to get right, and that organisations such as the Northern Rangelands Trust in Kenya have been extraordinarily successful in making sure that local people see the value of wildlife? We can assist in that through our role as an international mediator, although we are not a range state.

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend, who played an immensely distinguished role as a Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in leading on the defence of biodiversity and support for wildlife, is absolutely right. As well as acknowledging the role that elephants play as an iconic species in their own right and as a keystone species in guaranteeing biodiversity, the successful co-existence of elephants alongside man is a sign of an effective and functioning nation in Africa which is on the right path for the future. It has been so encouraging that enlightened leadership across African nations recognises the vital importance of ensuring that man and the elephant can live alongside one another in appropriate harmony.

It is also the case, of course, that there are forces within African nations that can see in the ivory trade an opportunity to make money, to feed organised crime and to support terrorist and other activity, and it is precisely because ivory poaching and the illegal wildlife trade sustain organised crime and subsidise terror that it is in the interests of all of us who not only want to protect nature and biodiversity, but want to see human societies and other states flourish, to take action to stamp out this crime, and that is what this Bill seeks to do.

UK Fisheries Policy

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

When I think of the time I spent in Brussels, sitting in sweaty rooms negotiating the reform of the common fisheries policy, I sometimes think, “Was that time all wasted?” I suggest that it was not, because the principles that we secured in the reforms are absolutely valid for the measures we need in future, to manage our fisheries after we leave the EU. The core theme that runs through the 25-year environment plan is the desire to leave the natural environment in a better state than the one in which we found it.

The marine environment is every bit as important as the terrestrial one, and key elements of the common fisheries reforms are consistent with that approach. A legal requirement to fish according to maximum sustainable yield, an end to discarding and to the top-down management of fisheries, and putting management of fisheries on a more local basis are key themes that should continue. The key principles should also be grounded in an ecosystems approach. Fish shoal in one area of sea, spawn in another and chase seasonally-dependent nutrition in another. Many of those areas cross national boundaries, so co-operation across those boundaries is vital. I want to hear what the Minister says about the Government’s thinking about that.

There is a cumulative effect from human activities. Overfishing, acidification, increased water temperature, cables and windfarms all have an impact on the management of our waters. There can be opportunities that come from that, and, in relation to marine planning as well as fisheries, I want a holistic view to be taken of the management of our seas. The fishing industry is a key part of that.

I join with every other Member of the House who has dissed the common fisheries policy, given the problems that it brought on our seas and coastal communities; but even if we had never gone into it, we would still face problems, because man’s ability to harvest from the oceans through increased technology has grown exponentially. We should still have faced the same problems of under-abundance that we face, to an extent, now—added to which the CFP made things much worse.

It is very important to consider how a legal requirement to fish sustainably, imposed under a pan-national organisation, is to be replaced by us as an independent state outside that organisation. The Secretary of State has spoken about the new body that will administer the environment, and what he said about that and about the process is also important. The Government will lay a national policy statement before Parliament, and that may require a separate marine policy statement. I hope that that, too, will be fundamentally linked to science and evidence, and that we shall produce a coherent, holistic system of management of our seas.

Marine Environment

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) spoke of his love of the poet John Clare. He was a great poet whose poetry is uplifting to read, but he could at times verge on the pessimistic. He once said,

“I am the self-consumer of my woes.”

That is a particularly apposite quotation for this debate because we—humankind—are the self-consumer of the woes we have created in terms of our management of the seas. There is a massive lightbulb moment going on around the world. We are seeing at last, as the hon. Members for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and for Huddersfield pointed out, marine conservation on a global scale, which is something to applaud.

I was extremely pleased to see President Obama with John Kerry, his Secretary of State, at his side announcing a marine protected area around Hawaii. It was fantastic that they did that. By comparison, Britain announced an area the size of India, vastly larger than the United States marine protected area, but it was sort of put out as a press release on a Friday night when no one was looking, as though it was the love that dare not speak its name.

Blue Belt is an outstanding policy that we should all be hugely proud of. I am glad that senior members of the Government, including the Foreign Secretary, came to the launch of my pamphlet, “Blue Belt 2.0”, which shows that the Government have at last grasped the fact that they have in their hands something really extraordinary. We can create a gift to the world from our imperial past; a necklace of marine protected areas around our overseas territories—or the confetti of empire, as somebody once called them. We can be extraordinarily proud about that.

I do not have time to go into all the many recommendations in “Blue Belt 2.0”, but it suggests to the Government how they can take things further, and address issues affecting the South Sandwich Islands. Britain is responsible for a quarter of the world’s penguins. That is a bit of information to win a pub quiz with. There are problems with what we are doing in areas such as Ascension Island. Our ambitions must keep in parallel with the innovation we have seen with the Catapult system that monitors those overseas marine protected areas. Then we can really succeed in the delivery of a proper marine conservation.

More than that, as with President Obama, what we do can be more than an act of environmental responsibility; it can be an act of global leadership. We can start to re-engage, post-Brexit, in organisations such as regional fisheries management organisations, from which Britain has had to withdraw, because the EU—rather badly—takes part in them. I have the scars on my back from the International Whaling Commission. I had to sit in EU co-ordination meetings, where I found that Britain’s very pro-whale conservation measures were watered down so that there could be a single EU view. Now we can open our shoulders like a batsman at the crease, and start to make a difference to the delivery of marine conservation.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey) about the On the Hook campaign. The Marine Stewardship Council is the only show in town in terms of accreditation of sustainable fisheries. It is a UK-registered, UK-based charity, so we are right to hold it to account. It has messed up, and there is a good chance that it could re-accredit an unsustainable fishery. That must stop, and I applaud colleagues who are taking part in the On the Hook campaign; we must continue to raise that.

There are many other areas where we can and should do more. The clean growth plan recently announced by the Government, with its real understanding of the need for a proper circular economy, addresses many of the issues that we have concerns about. It is vital to encourage industry to be innovative and to create markets that do not currently exist for recycled plastics in particular, but also for other manufactured products that end up in the oceans and the food chain, destroying the quality of the marine environment and our health. Government must nudge industry to deal with those things, and to get an understanding of what a circular economy is.

My final point is to ask, please, in the remaining months for which we are in the EU, that we hold it to account to make sure that pulse fishing is banned. It is a bottom trawling system using electrical pulses and is not at all selective. I applaud the Bloom Association and other NGOs that are campaigning hard on it.

I shall finish where I started, with John Clare. He said,

“I found the poems in the fields

And only wrote them down”.

He was saying that the natural world can influence our cultural and societal beliefs and values. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the oceans.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I completely agree. We lose 20,000 of these magnificent creatures every year. It is simply not good enough for the world to wash its hands and say that this is a responsibility of only developing nations. We have to act together globally to ensure that the threat to this magnificent animal is properly met.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

As my right hon. Friend examines the answers to the welcome consultation, will he disregard the scare stories being put about by certain parts of the antiques industry that say that old and much-valued artefacts will be destroyed under his proposals? That is not the intention. The intention is much more important—it is to help an iconic species that is on the verge of the risk of extinction.

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. His campaigning has been inspirational, and he is right to call out the one or two isolated voices who have attempted to generate scare stories about our consultation. Significant organisations across the cultural, antiques and art market sector have welcomed the nature of the consultation, and I am grateful for their constructive approach.