Clothing Industry: Ethical and Sustainable Fashion

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness not only on securing this debate but on the work that she has done in support of ethical clothing over many years. She is absolutely right to support ethical clothing. Ethical consumerism and sustainability in the textile industry is something that we should all support. As she indicated, it is an issue which gets support from some of the big players in the industry—for example, Levi Strauss; the Government, with their sustainable clothing map; and ethical retailers such as Marks & Spencer. But that support is often expressed more in word than in deed. In addition, although the support is passionate, it is also fragmented and unco-ordinated.

The reason is that this idea has many powerful forces and interests ranged against it. Thanks to the Government’s failure to give us any kind of hope for growth, the consumer of fashion has to grapple with increased VAT, higher fuel and food prices and concerns about employment, with little hope of the return to better times. Indeed, earlier this week the Governor of the Bank of England told a committee in the other place that the good times may never return. These conditions mean that price, speed, turnover and competition must take priority in the fashion industry. Rectitude and reputation take a back seat; and thanks to the attitude of our rescued banks, so does planning and investment for the longer term.

What is to be done? First, the Government have to get their act together and produce an overall green strategy for industry, a strategy that all can support. Until now, we have had only warm words. Environmentally friendly clothing and its disposal must be part of that strategy, and so must sustainable clothing. In Britain we have all the ingredients for this: textile design, textile technology and environmental technology. We even have fabrics that purify the air around them. All this needs is to be brought together as part of our green business strategy. Perhaps it could be part of the platform of the Technology Strategy Board, perhaps as one of the new technology and innovation centres. After all, with increased transport costs, rising raw material prices and rising wages in Asia, some manufacturing is coming back to other parts of the European Union, so why not here, where there is very high consumption? Less disposable and more sustainable clothing has the makings of a stable industry which can produce many jobs.

The talent is here. The Minister does not have to go far to see it on display every summer at the Treasury, where environmentally friendly textiles are enthusiastically exhibited. For the past dozen years, the Textile Institute, of which I have the honour of being a past president, has organised an exhibition of the work of the best students from our leading colleges. All the buyers come because they like the idea of going to the Treasury, or perhaps the attraction is that they get to have a cup of tea on your Lordships’ Terrace with me. But our best students are certainly learning about green and sustainable fashion, so why is it not part of the broader curriculum? As the noble Baroness, Lady Young, suggested, possibly the most environmentally friendly clothing with the least waste is made here—it is made to measure. And what about Government procurement, as the noble Baroness suggested?

Changing our perceptions and our culture is difficult. What we can all do, including the Government, is recognise the need for change and recognise the social, economic, scientific and commercial pressures that make that change necessary, and to acknowledge it and make it part of our overall vision for a sustainable and green future. Ranged against this is a growing scepticism about climate change. Recently I returned from a visit to the United States, and unfortunately that scepticism is particularly apparent there. But you never know. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, and her cause may get lucky. My local FE college runs an excellent catering course. For many years it was hard to fill, but then a celebrity chef came along. Now even the enlarged course is oversubscribed. So I would say to the noble Baroness: keep plugging away, because the future is on your side. To the Minister I would say: help make it happen, and make it happen here.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, I start by answering one question from the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, on the Defra website. I am not sure exactly what her concerns are, but I will look at that very carefully and get back to her in due course. I offer my congratulations to all other speakers in this debate, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, on introducing it on this subject. Like my noble friend Lord Addington, I faced a certain amount of ribaldry about the fact that I would have to answer such a debate. I do not think—unlike the description given of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, by the noble Baroness, Lady Quin—that I am the sort of person that one would see on the catwalk, and no one would expect to. But when I saw my noble friend the Chief Whip today, decked out in leather and quite a lot of bling—I do not know if other noble Lords saw her—I thought that it might be more appropriate for her to respond to the debate, but she was not prepared to take on that role, and there we are.

There is a lot that I want to say and quite a number of points that I want to address that the noble Baroness and others have raised. I start by offering my congratulations on the work that she has done in trying to put together again an all-party group—I cannot remember if it is a new all-party group or whether it is resurrecting the old one—on this subject. I wish her well on that. I understand that she is hoping to have the first meeting of that group on 16 March—that is what I was advised. That is the day before the next meeting that we have on the sustainable clothing road map, which is right and proper. I hope that those two things can go ahead consecutively on those dates. I offer her my best wishes.

I will run through very quickly some of the noble Baroness’s questions before I get to the main part of my speech. She asked about tax breaks for ethical, green fashion businesses. Noble Lords will know that I will not comment on that because it is more than my job's worth to comment on anything to do with Her Majesty's Treasury, but no doubt it will be passed on to colleagues. She also talked about the important role in terms of government procurement. I was reminded about that when I looked at the obituaries today, which announced the sad death of the last remaining son of the late Monty Burton of Burton the tailors. In that obituary, I was reminded that Burton the tailors provided a third of all uniforms for the British Army during the war and a large number of the demob suits afterwards. Therefore, one is reminded of the importance of the Government as a purchaser in this field. The Government feel that they have an important role to make sure that they get their exemplary action over to others. In Defra, I hope that we can lead that and encourage other government departments to behave in the right way.

The noble Baroness also asked about the supermarket adjudicator. The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, commented on it. Again, this is not something that we plan to extend to clothes, but no doubt we will look at the idea that she has put forward in due course. Initial plans for a supermarket adjudicator are related to food, but it is a perfectly valid point and one that should be looked at.

Finally and this again was raised by others, the noble Baroness talked about the problems of cotton and the CAP and the fairly appalling distortions in that. She and others will know that we are in the middle of the process of renegotiating the CAP. Dare I say it, we cannot make any promises about what we will achieve as a result of attempts to reform the CAP, but Her Majesty's Government will be pushing very hard on it and we recognise that there are some fairly major distortions in there, particularly in relation to the production of cotton in Portugal, Spain and, to a much lesser extent, Greece. That is certainly something that Her Majesty's Government should be aware of and will push for.

Economically, the clothing and fashion industry is an important component of national and global economies, as all noble Lords made clear. Textile supply chains are long and complicated. They involve actors from the agricultural, chemical fibre, textile, and apparel industries, the retail and services sector, and—thinking particularly of part of my own department—waste recovery and treatment operations.

As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, historically we had a major textile manufacturing base. As the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, reminded us, 90 per cent of the UK’s clothing is now imported. We have seen a major migration of our textile industry abroad. However, I remind the noble Lord that we still have a considerable clothing manufacturing business even if 90 per cent has gone abroad, and a lot of that is in SMEs and involved in what we might refer to as ethical and sustainable fashion. I note again what he had to say about his ideas, which should be looked at. Those businesses are ones that we should continue to encourage and support.

Our consumption of clothes and textiles and so forth can have positive economic effects on not only our own country's economy but, as was made clear by a number of speakers, a great many developing countries. But alongside those positive effects, there are a wide range of environmental and ethical implications.

Alongside those positive effects, there is a wide range of environmental and ethical implications. Environmentally, we must consider the impact of fibre production all the way through the process, whether the water or the fertiliser—I have been given a figure for the amount of fertiliser used throughout the world on cotton; about 25 per cent of all pesticides go into that. I will correct that figure if I have got it wrong.

We also have to consider the greenhouse gas emissions when fossil fuels are processed into synthetic fibres. As the fibres are made into fabrics, there may be hazardous waste. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned the cotton and dyeing industry and the effluents from the dye and finishes.

As noble Lords have reminded us, ethical issues are associated with access to markets, trade terms for producer markets—that is why I wanted to mention the CAP—and concerns about labour conditions in clothing factories, sweatshop conditions and child labour issues.

Once we have bought clothes, there are the significant factors of water, detergents, greenhouse gas emissions associated with washing and drying them, and the waste produced at the end of life. Waste issues are close to my department. They have hit the headlines recently. Concerns about the impact of fast fashion are well founded. I was given an interesting statistic earlier. We buy about 2 million tonnes of clothing a year and discard about 1 million tonnes. It seems to me that our wardrobes are growing at an unsustainable rate, but I ask all noble Lords and Ladies to look at their wardrobes to see what is happening. Where are the clothes going?

The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, rightly referred to the sustainable clothing road map, which was established in 2007. It is a concerted effort by the whole clothing supply chain to understand and address its environmental and ethical impact. The road map provides a platform for sharing evidence and industry best practice to help catalyse change throughout the sector. From the evidence, the road map has prioritised certain hotspot areas where business can act to reduce the environmental and ethical impact of its clothing. The road map has produced an action plan under which more than 40 organisations, throughout the lifespan of clothing manufacture, retail and disposal, have committed themselves to specific actions to reduce their impact. A large number of big high street names are involved—Nike, Tesco, Adidas. I add that it involves not just big retail but people such as the Salvation Army, the Textile Recycling Association and Oxfam, because they have a role in disposal—reuse—which comes very high up in our waste hierarchy, because it is obviously far better to reuse or recycle clothes than to send them to landfill.

I assure the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, who I think asked about education, that the Salvation Army is committed to the educative process of encouraging people to think of recycling and re-use and, as she put it, repair of clothing rather than throwing it out. People of my father's generation were even taught how to darn socks. I have never learnt that art and, I fear, now tend to throw out socks, but a different generation did different things. Within Defra, we have funded evidence projects on emerging fibres, reuse and recycling of clothes, clothes cleaning and the public understanding of sustainable clothing, and we will do more where appropriate.

I am now getting warning signs from my colleagues, but I should talk a little about what other government departments are doing, because DfID did considerable work when it recently launched its RAGS programme—that is the responsible and accountable garment sector challenge fund, which is a £3 million fund which supports projects aimed at improving the conditions of vulnerable workers in the ready-made garment production industries overseas. The fund is aimed at workers in low-income countries that supply the United Kingdom market such as India, Bangladesh, and a certain number of countries in Africa.

I can also mention the ethical trading initiative, supported by DfID, which drives practical action on better working conditions in the supply chains of its companies. It has brought businesses, trade unions and non-governmental organisations together to tackle poor working conditions. Some 60 companies in the United Kingdom are now members making progress in this initiative.

I could go on; there is much that I would like to say if the time were available. I am trying to assure you that we are doing our bit and that we will continue to work in all these funds. I look forward to the next meeting, on 17 March, on the sustainable clothing road map, and I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, will be involved in that.

[Lord Haskel]

Before the Minister sits down, could he tell us what percentage of clothing—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the time has been exceeded.