Plastic Pollution
Debate between Lord Dubs and Baroness Vere of Norbiton
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
My noble friend raises a very important point. Energy from waste is potentially one of the solutions. However, we do not want to see items being sidetracked from recycling and reuse into energy from waste. Certainly, if we can stop products going to landfill, we will look at incineration. We are working with the Environment Agency and looking at how plastics are burned and any emissions that are released. We understand that Public Health England’s position on carbon dioxide release, for example, remains that modern, well-managed incinerators are not a significant risk to public health.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, everything is in the future—we are going to do it some time. When will all this happen? Years ago when we pressed the Government on charging for plastic bags in supermarkets, they said, “No, no, no, we are never going to do it”. Eventually they changed their minds. Can we get a move on? It is a crisis.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
I am not entirely sure that the Labour Government did it either. The reality is that it was the Conservative Government who banned microbeads and introduced the 5p charge on plastic bags, which has reduced their usage by 86%. We are consulting on increasing the charge to 10p and for it to cover all different retailers. It is wrong to say that nothing has been done, but it is right to say that the Government have great plans for the future, and we will be tackling plastic pollution.
Food and Farming (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019
Debate between Lord Dubs and Baroness Vere of Norbiton
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, may I add my thanks to the Minister and to her team of officials who met us last week to go through the issues contained in this SI? It was helpful. It may have shortened what I was going to say; it may not have done.
I start with a question about GMOs. The Minister has explained that certain corrections have had to be made to legislation that had already been passed, and that this is a bit of a tidying-up procedure. We accept this, because we know that there has been pressure to produce a lot of these SIs very quickly.
I suppose it is necessary to ask the Minister about impact assessments. These SIs—I am talking about GMOs in particular now—will surely add some existing burden to UK authorities as well as to the devolved Administrations. In Northern Ireland, I assume that the decisions will be made by civil servants, as there is nobody else to make them. Is this right? It does not seem satisfactory but, in the absence of a functioning Administration, the whole situation in Northern Ireland is not satisfactory. I presume this is all that can be done.
Can I ask one specific question? If in future we wanted to tighten up the regulations about GMOs, would it be straightforward? Would there be any implications for trade with the EU? I assume that the reverse would not apply. I hope we would not want to liberalise our regulations but, if we did, it would run counter to EU practices.
I turn to the question of direct payments. I have some sympathy with the Minister here. For a time, I was a junior Minister in Northern Ireland and agriculture was one of my responsibilities. I will not bore the Committee with anecdotes about Agriculture Council meetings in Brussels, amusing as some of them were. Although it is not quite on the same subject, I will say that we consistently had tremendous support from the Irish Government. Whenever an issue came before the Agriculture Council—and there were many—the Irish Government went out of their way to be supportive of the British Government. I should like this to be on the record. I presume that the corrections that had to take place were as a result of oversights. We will move on from there.
Finally, I turn to the question of wines and spirits. In the briefing with the Minister, we spent a little time talking about tequila and mescal. These are two alcoholic drinks which I have never touched. I did my best to find some tequila before today’s Committee, but I failed. I wonder if the Minister would care to buy me a tequila at some time in the future—or allow me to buy one for her. We are talking about retained EU legislation on wine and spirits. I understand that the issue is about the geographical origin of products. We have been talking about Tennessee whiskey and bourbon. I understand that the Mexican drinks will come on the scene at some point in future when further negotiations have taken place. So we are going ahead with some of these drinks and the others will presumably follow.
My understanding is that geographical indications are used to identify a product whose quality, reputation or other characteristics are linked to its geographical origin. This will now be the responsibility of the Secretary of State, having previously been an EU responsibility. I assume that the question of geographical indication will cover many products in addition to those covered by this SI—this is a fairly common thing. It is right and proper that we should continue to co-operate with the EU and retain as many of the existing EU regulations as possible in practice.
I am not quite clear why these regulations would replace the current annexe with a shorter list. I hope I have this right. I understand that only UK spirit drink GIs would be automatically protected in UK law after exit. In contrast, UK GIs for spirit drinks will continue to be recognised by the EU as third-country GIs after exit, including in a no-deal scenario. I am not quite clear if I have understood that, and maybe the Minister will be able to clarify it.
The questions are: how prepared are we to operate our own GI systems? Can the Minister assure the Committee that the department will have the necessary staff and resources, and of course the expertise, to run the new system? The Government have stated that Defra will publish guidance on how to apply to the UK GI scheme in March 2019, which is this month, so can the Minister give an update on the completion of that guidance? Lastly, what consultation has the department undertaken with the devolved authorities over the design and implementation of the new UK GI scheme?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to what has turned out to be a short debate. I expected it to be fairly short, but some very valuable questions have been raised so I will be very pleased to answer as many as I can. If there is more that I can add then I will certainly write.
I turn first to the comments made by my noble friend Lady Byford. It is always a pleasure to have her in the Committee to make sure that we are doing things correctly, and she certainly does that. She referred to the issue of the Select Committee and the instrument being made affirmative. Without wishing to detract at all from the valuable work done by the Select Committee, it is the case that the functions being transferred across in this SI are administrative functions, not legislative. There was a potential slight misunderstanding about exactly which powers were coming across. Other legislative functions have come across in other SIs but not in this one. However, we took the decision that this gives us as a Government the opportunity to explain the position, so we decided that we would accept the Select Committee’s decision to make it affirmative, although there was always the opportunity for us to have gone back and explain that. We felt, “Why not make sure that everyone is completely happy?”, so we decided to stand in front of your Lordships today and explain that these are administrative functions, while those legislative functions came across in other SIs that were affirmative anyway and have already been discussed by the Committee.
My noble friend also asked whether there were further statutory instruments to come. There are a few but not as many as there were, so that is a bonus. Nearly all of them have now been scheduled for debate, so we have a good idea of what is left. Obviously, we are consolidating where possible to ensure that we do not have too many debates. It is vital to ensure that our legislation is up to date for exit day, whenever that comes. We can certainly say that we are in the end game now; we are at the end of the process and we should have everything in place very soon. As my noble friend will know, there are more coming tomorrow, so I hope she will join us then.
International Waste Shipments (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019
Debate between Lord Dubs and Baroness Vere of Norbiton(5 years, 9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I join in thanking the Minister and her officials for a useful and helpful discussion yesterday. It was probably intended to answer questions to shorten this debate, but unfortunately it gave me more things to think about after the discussion, so it may not have achieved its end. However, I appreciate the trouble the Minister and her officials went to to answer questions and to brief us.
I appreciate this SI is based on the Basel convention, which is not an EU convention, and therefore it is quite right that we should conform to it. I also hope that the bulk of what we are talking about will be proved unnecessary if we do not crash out of the EU, as some people fear. I am not sure whether yesterday’s discussions in the House of Commons have made that easier, but that is not for debate today. I understand that something has to be done, even if we leave the EU on the basis that the Government are suggesting, as some elements of this will have to be carried over eventually, but that is not for today.
There is obvious concern about Spain and Gibraltar but not because there may not be a simple answer. I read in the papers that the Spanish Government are concerned about Gibraltar and may be using this and other measures to bring pressure to bear on our Government about the future of Gibraltar. The danger is that this may drag on beyond the exit date—although we now probably have three months longer—but what happens if the Gibraltar and Spain issue is not resolved by the time we leave the EU? How many businesses will be affected? What is the position there? The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee was,
“concerned that any refusal by a competent authority to treat an existing approval as valid could have an impact on the UK’s ability to export notified wastes”.
If we cannot reach an agreement with Spain in time, we would presumably have to have new agreements with other countries to get rid of the waste there, or are we stuck with it? What is going to happen?
I have a few more questions beyond Spain and Gibraltar. Do the Government expect an additional workload for the UK’s competent authorities—the Environment Agency, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales—as a result of Brexit? What will be the cost to taxpayers of any additional workload?
The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee recommended that the instrument should be upgraded,
“to the affirmative procedure so that the House may consider any potential impact on UK manufacturers”.
Can the Minister tell us a little more about what impact there might be on British manufacturers? Is there an impact assessment somewhere, or do the Government feel one is not necessary?
Paragraph 6.4 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which is perhaps easier to understand than the main document—that is not surprising—states:
“Provisions …. on waste shipments, which transfer legislative powers from the European Commission to the Secretary of State, are included in a separate cross-cutting transfer of legislative functions instrument relating to the environment”.
Is that a different statutory instrument? If so, which is it, when will it be published and how does it relate to the SI we are discussing now?
Paragraph 7.4 states that, in the event of no deal,
“UK exporters will need to familiarise themselves with the customs guidelines the EU has laid down for imports of waste from outside the EU”.
What have the Government done to publicise these guidelines to UK exporters? What is the cost to UK exporters if we leave the EU without a deal?
Paragraph 7.6 states that the instrument is:
“Amending references to the EU and EU institutions and administrative processes to UK equivalents”.
What are the UK equivalents? What is the cost to the UK taxpayer for this additional workload? Will the UK equivalent institutions need to take on new members of staff to handle the administrative processes? How many new members of staff have already been hired to deal with this?
Paragraph 7.8 states:
“A number of amendments … on waste shipments are not included in this instrument but will instead be contained within a separate cross-cutting statutory instrument relating to the environment”.
Which SI is that? Is it the one I asked about earlier? Has it already been published? If no, when will it be?
Paragraph 10.2 states:
“Government informally engaged stakeholders at a large face-to-face event … No substantive comments or issues were raised”.
What stakeholders did the Government engage with? What were their concerns?
Finally, I am not trying to pull a fast one, but page 29 of the instrument refers to Article 55 under the heading “Designation of frontier crossing points”. I must ask about Northern Ireland; the Minister is nodding. Is any waste going back and forth between Northern Ireland and the Republic? If so, what are the implications of this designation on the wider discussions concerning an open border between the United Kingdom and the Republic? I should have given the Minister some warning about the last point; she will not have been expecting it, but I thought I should make it anyway.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
I thank noble Lords for their contributions, especially the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, whose approach to this SI has been particularly forensic—I hope that he will do many more. I will address some of the issues raised today. A number of questions were asked that go into slightly more detail beyond the nugget of legislation that noble Lords are looking at today. I will therefore probably write a letter in addition to what I say today, particularly on the border crossing issue, which goes far beyond the scope of our considerations. I hope that I can answer noble Lords’ questions and put their minds at rest.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh mentioned the UK plan. I assure her that there are no concerns about the UK plan; it has been in place since 2012 and will continue.
Furthermore, my noble friend referred to the 556 approvals. She is quite right: when this instrument was laid, it looked like we had a mountain to climb in getting this waste approved and out of the country. I am pleased to say that this is an example of us working really well with our EU counterparts, who recognise the same as us that the shipment of this type of waste is hugely beneficial on both sides. It is an economic arrangement and makes sure that we get our waste treated in the right place, particularly where we do not have the capacity to do it ourselves.
The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned the trade in waste, both with China and more generally. If we lived in a perfect world, we would be able to dispose of and treat waste in our own nations, and that would continue for ever. However, some waste has a greater economic value to other countries or they have greater facilities to process that specific sort of waste, so I cannot see a future, at least in the short term, where we will ban all waste exports, because we simply cannot deal with some waste ourselves. However, we want to promote UK-based recycling and export less waste to be processed abroad. We are looking at a suite of measures, such as increasing the monitoring of international waste shipments and charging higher fees to improve compliance. We set out all these ideas in the recent resources and waste strategy, as the noble Lord will know, and we will publish more detailed plans soon.
The instrument retains the prohibition on the export of waste for disposal to countries outside the EU or the European Free Trade Association. The export of hazardous or household waste for recovery to countries outside the OECD is prohibited. Where we export waste destined for recycling to countries such as China—there will be other examples—that are better able to cope with this sort of waste, they will have specified which wastes they are willing to import and the procedures that UK exporters must follow are very well set out.