Environment Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, this has been an extraordinary, wide-ranging and fascinating debate, and it is a pleasure to follow the noble Viscount. I found his speech absolutely riveting.

I am happy to support what the Government are doing in this Bill, and I do not dissent at all from their wish to improve the natural environment and air and water quality. It is entirely appropriate that there should be legislation to bring about the necessary changes. Clean and safe drinking water and effective sewerage in Victorian times, the smoking ban earlier this century, and the Clean Air Act of the 1950s were all the results of laws passed by Parliament. These all contributed massively to public health, and this Bill is intended to do the same. I certainly do not intend to oppose it.

However, such a policy brings with it a danger of unintended consequences. Had a ban on coal burning extended beyond domestic consumption, it would have wiped out almost overnight the entire heritage steam sector: coal-burning railway locomotives on conserved lines and main lines, traction engines, steamrollers, industrial museums, steamboats, pumping stations and traditional fires in historic houses.

Two years ago, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Heritage Rail—I declare an interest as one of its vice-chairs and also as president of the Heritage Railway Association—was sufficiently alarmed to conduct an inquiry into the requirement of heritage railways for coal and the future of steam locomotives in the United Kingdom. The group’s report concluded that steam trains are an essential part of the railway heritage offer and are the principal attraction for visitors. There is no practical alternative to the use of coal for steam locomotives on Britain’s heritage railways. The economics of heritage railways are fragile, and they would lose most of their unique appeal if they were unable to run steam trains. Such a loss would result in redundancy among paid staff, a restriction in operations, and a smaller sector.

It is worth recalling that, in normal times, these railways attract 13 million visitors, provide 4,000 jobs, with 22,000 active volunteers, and have a £400 million positive impact on the national economy. The impact on local tourism economies where heritage railways are located, particularly in rural areas, is immense. They also provide training and apprenticeships in a wide range of skills and disciplines. In remote areas, such as north Wales, they are already contributing to the levelling-up agenda. The value of the wider sector, which embraces steam road vehicles, ships and boats, is also considerable. It, too, contributes to local economies and offers training, education and apprenticeships. The same goes for engineering museums and historic houses.

I understand why the Government are ending coal-fired power generation by 2025, and I support the restrictions on domestic coal burning proposed in the Government’s consultation on the clean air strategy. I also welcome Ministers’ repeated assertions that the heritage sector is excluded from the proposals in the Bill. They are right to do so, bearing in mind that the quantity of coal used by the entire sector is no more than about 35,000 tonnes a year—the amount burned each day by the Drax power station before it was converted to biomass. Clearly the risk to public health is tiny.

However, having accepted that the sector may continue to burn coal to make steam, it will be essential that there is an affordable supply. I expect that in future all the coal needed will be imported from countries such as Russia, Colombia and the United States. Bearing in mind the scale of the carbon footprint involved in moving coal from one side of the world to another, that makes no sense to me while we here in Great Britain are sitting on vast unmined resources of our own. I accept that we have lost that battle, and it is worth remembering that heritage railways in particular are working hard to reduce emissions and are researching the potential for artificial biocoal.

However, we must not lose the next battle in which another, less well-disposed, Government may decide to attack the activities of the heritage steam sector, perhaps under the climate change rather than clean air agenda, and we need some certainty for the future. My colleagues in the Heritage Fuels Alliance and the HRA and I greatly appreciated the opportunity to meet the Minister on 25 May to discuss these matters and we are happy to accept his assurances for the purposes of this Bill. He will recall that he said that banning heritage coal use would be a disproportionate response to the clean air and climate change agendas and would damage the great cultural and economic value of the steam sector to our tourism economy. I therefore hope that the Minister will agree to accept an amendment I plan to table in Committee that will put that welcome support into the Bill.

Environment Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has indicated that he wishes to speak.

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Amendment 5 withdrawn.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 6. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in this group to a Division must make that clear in debate.

Amendment 6

Moved by

Environment Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 28th June 2021 Lords Chamber

Taxation is also a significant lever in achieving environmental benefit. Conversely, poorly designed taxation can have a poor environmental impact, often through unintended consequences—so we really need both government departments, in making their spending decisions, and the Treasury, in making allocations, to take account of and adhere to the environmental principles. I very much believe that these exceptions need to be removed, and I support Amendment 78.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

The noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I support the Government’s approach on this. Requiring a policy statement on environmental principles is the right approach. Obviously, government must follow the principles, but to make this explicit in the way proposed in the lead amendment would provide scope for mischief-makers and single-issue enthusiasts doggedly to pursue matters in the courts and elsewhere, to the detriment of efficiency and the overall public interest.

The Bill does not and cannot go into the necessary detail, so it seems to me that Amendment 73 would create sweeping requirements and huge uncertainty. For example, how could you prove that environmental protection was integrated into the making of all policies? How could you prove that the polluter pays principle was respected—and in every public body, as now suggested? I am afraid that this is virtue signalling, and it is unenforceable. We have too much repetitive legislation moving in the direction of vague promises and, therefore, storing up decades of trouble for perhaps a favourable headline today. On a Bill so important for the future of our country, I feel that it is time to call a halt.

I have another concern, which is the reference to the precautionary principle in Clause 16. As I think we will hear in due course from my noble friend Lord Trenchard, the Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform, set up by the Prime Minister on 2 February, is set to recommend that this principle should not be carried over from EU law. What is my noble friend the Minister’s response to this? Can he kindly explain why the precautionary principle needs to be included in the list of environmental principles?

The basic difficulty of the precautionary principle is obvious. It provides no mechanism for determining how precautionary we need to be. It can always be argued that, however precautionary it is proposed we should be, we should be even more so. Should the chance of death from a new medicine be less than one in a million, or one in a billion? We have no means of deciding. Human progress has also been characterised by innovation, from the wheel and wheat yields to the internet. The precautionary principle could put the latest innovations at risk and, I fear, ensure that they are not invented here in Britain. The list in Clause 16(5) seems more than adequate for environmental protection without this extra principle.

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[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support some of the amendments in this group in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and others. I support the views of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who just spoke about the importance of the list of environmental principles contained in Amendment 75.

We are in danger of having a debate over a more detailed list, that some noble Lords have said may be unenforceable, and a higher-level list which, sadly, many people would say was a bit like motherhood and apple pie and probably unenforceable for that reason. I think the list in Amendment 75 is extremely good. But, as other noble Lords have said, environmental interests can conflict with commercial interests, even if they are hidden by something that is called “environment.” A debate can sometimes use pretty abstruse environmental information to put forward an argument that is not necessarily compliant with everything that should be on this list.

I was involved in the Aarhus convention some years ago, and that seems to sum this up. It is a great shame we do not have it and it has to go back in here if this amendment is accepted; it is about public participation and how to extract information from Governments and public bodies wishing to hide it until it is too late to cause any problems. It is very important to put this in more detail in the environmental principles.

I am also concerned about exemptions. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone mentioned the example about trees, which was quite frightening. Some friends from Plymouth who live next to one of the muddy creeks said that the MoD turned up with a jack-up barge a few weeks ago. They asked, “What is this jack-up barge doing? This is mud, which is quite environmentally friendly—there are lots of birds, fish and everything else,”. The MoD said, “We are going to put a large pylon in to help the submarines go into one of the docks in Plymouth.” My friends asked, “Shouldn’t you have told anybody? Shouldn’t you have told the local council? Shouldn’t you have consulted the residents along this little muddy creek?”

They ended up having three public meetings about this, with the top brass of the Navy turning up with an ever-increasing number of stripes on their arms to say how important this particular pylon was. They said in reply, “Anybody who knows anything about pilotage or moving big ships knows that you do not need this anyway, so why are you doing it? You’re supposed to be the experts”. We can go into the navigation issues, but that does not really matter. The point is that this is another example of the MoD trampling over people. If my friends had not phoned up those at the council and asked whether they knew about this—oh no they did not—it would have gone ahead, and they would have had a great big pylon in the middle of a rather nice creek which was quite happy as it was.

Unfortunately, the MoD has a reputation for not always consulting and not always thinking about whether something is really necessary. My view on so much of this is that we say it is necessary for A, B or C—and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said that we have to move forwards, or something like that—but we must occasionally think “Can we do without it?” We do not have to go back to the horse and cart, but life and the environment might be much better if we did do without it.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

As the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, pointed out in her earlier speech, she has been listed twice. I will not call her a second time, but will instead call the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA. This is a very extensive group of amendments which, quite rightly, places the responsibility for the environmental principles on all public bodies and authorities. Amendment 75 from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, removes these environmental principles and substitutes a far more extensive set to ensure that biodiversity, climate change and human health are all part of the consideration of the Bill.

My noble friend Lady Parminter seeks in Amendment 78, again quite rightly, to put the environmental principles at the heart of government and has expanded on the wish to include all government departments within the scope of the Bill. It is a nonsense, as we have just heard the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, eloquently say, to allow the MoD and the Treasury to be excused from the need to take responsibility for what happens to the planet. We cannot have highly influential policymakers ignoring the efforts that the rest of the country is making to improve our environment for future generations, especially where this includes SSSIs, as my noble friend Lady Parminter said.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and others, including the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, raised the knotty issue of ensuring the Minister “must ensure compliance with” and not only “have due regard to”. The Minister can have due regard to the comments your Lordships are making this afternoon, but he does not have to comply with them, no matter how passionately our arguments are put. He can have due regard, take note of what we say and then completely ignore it. I am not suggesting that the Minister will do this, but it shows that, unless compliance is in the Bill, there will be little confidence that it will make the difference we are all looking for.

The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, gave us a very powerful example of where environmental principles should be upheld by all government departments. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, urged the Government to adopt the New Zealand Treasury model, where the environment is at the heart of its policies. I regret that we cannot agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, but I note that she is chair of the Select Committee on planning, and so can understand where she is coming from. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, also gave a very powerful example of the precautionary principle where it affected Natural England.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, make the case for the involvement of, and consultation with, Scottish Ministers and the Welsh Senedd respectively with regard to environmental principles and reserved matters. The devolved Administrations cannot be ignored, although the Bill makes it clear that it relates only to England. Unless we have a holistic approach across the whole of GB, we will see piecemeal policies and uneven progress on vital matters. I look forward to the Minister’s response and hope we will not have to bring these issues back on Report, because I can tell from the level of enthusiasm and passion we have heard in this debate that, unless we get a satisfactory response, we will go around them again.

Environment Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 279, which is grouped with the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I tabled it with noble Lords from across the Chamber, the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Bradshaw, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, because we believe that the members of the heritage steam alliance—heritage railways, steam boats and ships, steam road vehicles, engineering museums and historic houses—are entitled to have confirmed the guarantee given by the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, in a private meeting on 25 May and repeated by him at Second Reading on 7 June, that they will be permitted to continue to burn coal. That guarantee should be placed in the Bill and enshrined in the Act when it finally passes.

At Second Reading, the noble Lord said:

“The Government are very confident, as am I, that heritage railways will continue to operate, because although our electricity systems will no longer rely on coal, it can still be used by a range of industries that need it”.—[Official Report, 7/6/21; col. 1306.]


In our meeting a fortnight earlier, he said that banning heritage coal use would be a disproportionate response to the clean air and climate change agendas and would damage the great cultural and economic value of the steam sector to our tourism economy. There is no need for me make again my Second Reading speech about the value of the heritage rail sector and other aspects of the heritage steam alliance to tourism and the regional economy in particular. I simply make the point that all Amendment 279 does is to put it beyond any doubt that the assurances Ministers have repeatedly given us that the heritage steam sector will remain in being have the force of law and cannot be reversed without fresh primary legislation.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.

Environment Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, just as in the previous group, in this group there are some really forward-thinking amendments that can go a long way to ending our devastating impact on rivers and the wider environment. Some are so good that I have amendment envy and wish I had thought of them—but obviously two Greens cannot be everywhere, although we do our best.

We all seem to agree here that we currently use water in an extremely illogical way. So much clean, drinkable water is flushed down the loo when there is a really obvious alternative: to not use it. The separation and capture of grey water should be routine, and the Government should make it a requirement in building regs, because the benefits are so blindingly clear.

I operate a grey water system at home, which means flushing the loo with my washing-up water. It is very sophisticated. I walk with the bowl from one room to the other, and it works extremely well. The water out of our sinks is likely contaminated with eco-friendly soap, perhaps dirt from our hands, bits of food and things like that, but it is fine for washing our toilets, watering our gardens, even washing our cars—if you have one—and doing a whole host of other things. This relatively simple system will of course hugely cut down on our water usage and the stresses placed on the sewage system, because we automatically cut down our wastewater by almost half.

When we combine this separation and reuse of grey water with the separation of sewage from drainage, we have a much more sustainable water system. I hope that not very long into the future we will look back on the idea of using clean water to flush our toilets and then mixing it with rainwater, before spending huge amounts of money getting the sewage back out, as almost as illogical and disgusting as throwing our toilet contents out of the windows into the open streets, as used to happen a couple of hundred years ago. In truth, we have actually just made it a bit more complicated and put the sewers underground, but in essence it is the same: we are throwing our sewage into our streets.

This should be a priority for the Government, both at home and around the world. The same solutions that will clean up our sewage system in the UK will help clean, safe water systems elsewhere in the world. We have a responsibility to make sure that other countries have safe water supplies. This does all sorts of things, including reducing the risk of disease for millions of people in other countries. Of course, it also significantly reduces our disastrous impact on the earth’s rivers, lakes and seas.

I keep raising the issue of COP 26 but, quite honestly, we have to have something to take there that we are actually proud of. The rest of the world will be watching. It will not be like the G7; it will be a completely different situation in which other countries will judge us on what we are doing here, and I just hope we can measure up.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Lucas.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I very much support the idea that the automatic right of connection should end. We really need an arrangement that puts pressure on developers to make their developments as friendly to the water system as possible, and an automatic right of connection obviously does not achieve that—so that should be a very fruitful direction to go in.

Has my noble friend looked at the Hampshire County Council nitrates credit scheme? This is a scheme it is putting together so that new housing developments in Hampshire, which would otherwise add to the nitrate burden in rivers and therefore to nitrate pollution in the estuary, can offset that additional pollution by purchasing farmland, which is currently a substantial source of nitrates, and taking that out of production. This is an interesting idea, but I very much hope my noble friend will look at integrating such schemes into the overall direction of the Bill.

First, I do not think it is a good idea that developers should have a simple way around their obligations. They ought to be doing things internal to the development to reduce pollution and the stress on the water system. To allow them to buy their way out of it does not seem desirable. On the other side of things, if we are to take land out of production for these purposes, that absolutely ought to be integrated with the other schemes happening in the Bill—forestry, rewilding, biodiversity gain and so on—not just something that happens randomly on the side. I very much hope that between now and Report my noble friend will be able to take an interest in what Hampshire is up to.

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We will also ensure that any relevant underlying legislation can, where appropriate, accommodate any potential future expansion of rainwater harvesting as well as other water reuse and storage options. I hope that the details I have set out about how the measures in this Bill and future actions will interlock with and support other areas of government policy on water management have been helpful. Sustainable management of water delivers multiple benefits to society and the environment. I thank noble Lords for their contributions and hope that I have shown that the Government have listened. I respectfully ask that the amendment be withdrawn.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have received a request to speak after the Minister from the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann.

[Baroness Altmann (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I apologise for not being able to participate in the earlier discussion. I thank my noble friend for his clear response and for the meeting that he held. Will he clarify the Government’s thinking? Clause 78 requires a plan and an annual review, but who takes responsibility for the urgent action needed to control not just storm overflows but other discharges that are polluting our rivers? What will plans entailing long-term action mean for the Government’s expectation of how this will work? I know that my noble friend passionately agrees that we must deal with this issue. Will he commit to having further discussions with all interested noble Lords?

I thank my noble friend, as I will call him, the Duke of Wellington for all the work he has done to address the issue of who should take responsibility for the urgent action and financing needed to improve this situation and to invest the necessary resources to avoid or reduce polluting our rivers year by year. This could be done together with Ofwat, possibly by passing the costs of sewage waste on to household and commercial water bills. At the moment, it seems that people do not really focus on the costs of the waste they generate: it is waste, it is gone and therefore it does not feature, as it would if there were a perceived or actual cost. Perhaps the Minister would agree to meet to discuss this possibility.

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Clause 81 agreed.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 176. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in this group to a Division must make that clear in the debate.

Clause 82: Water abstraction: no compensation for certain licence modifications

Amendment 176

Moved by

Environment Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 15th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Noble Lords]

Order!

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness has moved her amendment.

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)]

I was delighted to add my name to the noble Baroness’s amendment, because I fully support her in this. I enjoy her banging on about ancient woodlands but, for those noble Lords who do not, there is a simple remedy: vote for the amendment.