Environment Bill

Lord Lexden Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has already set out the temporal position of the Bill: it is at the end of a long line of debates on the Agriculture Act, the Fisheries Act, the Trade Act and Brexit. It is the place where the Government told us that many of the issues raised in those debates would finally be dealt with. It would seem that it is also the place where the Dasgupta review’s call for new economic indicators should be acknowledged, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, referred to. It is the place to start the transformation from an economy based on the exploitation of people and the environment to a system based on resilience and regeneration.

Some 25 years after the Act that set up the Environment Agency, the Bill is certainly urgently needed, for that Act and 25 years of Governments of various hues have clearly failed. Our nation ranks 187th globally for the state of our nature. Much of it is a beautiful but sterile green desert, from the burned, shorn land of our first national park in the Peak District to the rapeseed flowers now blanketing chemical-drenched fields.

Yet food security remains an acute and pressing issue. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, I will not posit a third world war, but rather point to our responsibility, as a wealthy nation, not to take food, water, labour and resources from the fields and mouths of others in a world where production is threatened by the climate emergency, the water crisis, the destruction of soils and the massive practice of food waste that is the factory farming of animals.

Many noble Lords have already addressed issues that the Green group—all two of us—will seek to offer our support on. I endorse many things that the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said so eloquently, including on the need for environmental principles to be applied universally, the need for local governments to have the resources they need to protect and enhance nature, and the principle of net biodiversity gain not excluding major infrastructure developments. In fact, I will go further: we need to abolish the principle of biodiversity offsetting. We have so little left that we cannot afford to destroy any national treasure that we have left—certainly not for the uncertain outcome of a few saplings stuck in a field and called a replacement for an ancient forest.

Relatedly, the Secretary of State should not be allowed to amend the habitat regulations at will. The noble Lord, Lord Montrose, spoke of a forest of Henry VIII regulation. This is one forest that should be felled. The noble Lords, Lord Khan and Lord Rooker, focused particularly on the legal weakness—indeed, the legal attack on basic principles contained in the Bill—as so powerfully outlined by the Bingham Centre. We will work on that.

I agree with everything said by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, who is not currently in her place, and thank her for drawing attention to the Knepp planning issue. Drawing a broader point from that, in their planning and agriculture principles, the Government seem to be locked into a sparing rather than a sharing mindset—one of sparing a little land and making it pristine and rich but trashing the rest for industrial agriculture or housing luxury development of a kind that fails to meet urgent community needs. We need to care for all of our land.

The noble Lord, Lord Trees, pointed out an obvious gaping hole in the Bill: the lack of measures on antimicrobial resistance. I do not often quote David Cameron, but I will today:

“With some 25,000 people a year already dying from infections resistant to antibiotic drugs in Europe alone, this is not some distant threat but something happening right now”.


That was in 2014. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, rightly stressed the importance of our marine environment and the non-existence of its protection. The Green group intends to offer support on all these issues and more.

I am afraid that the nature of the rest of my speech is also that of a list—that is, a list of the issues that I have not heard other noble Lords clearly set out. This reflects concerns that my noble friend and I have heard from the millions of voters we do our best to represent and the many industry and campaign groups whose issues are not covered or are badly dealt with by the Bill.

The ordering is roughly in the order of the easiest issues, from those that any sensible Government would surely embrace through to those that require a fundamental philosophical shift and an understanding that there are enough resources on this planet for everyone to have a decent life and for the natural environment to be cared for if we just share them out fairly. This requires a sudden outbreak of understanding of planetary limits—I live in hope.

First, on plastic and packaging materials, an amendment is needed to ensure that the bottle deposit scheme is variable, reflecting the size and impact of bottles, not just their number. An amendment is also needed to tackle the horrendously costly waste of disposable nappies, both to household budgets and the cost we all bear in council waste. However, what is really lacking in the Bill is an understanding of the waste pyramid. Recycling is third best; we have to reduce and reuse, and recycling comes a poor third.

Secondly, on pesticides, we have soaked the planet with poison. We need to protect rural dwellers, and the whole of our land, from pesticide applications.

Briefly, because I am running out of time, human rights have to be linked to environmental rights—due diligence along the lines of the Bribery Act. Then there is the issue of what land is for, which was partially raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. It has to be for the people and for the natural world. Driven grouse shooting, growing food to waste in feeding animals kept in misery, and sugar beet production, which strips soils and produces obesity, are some examples of land uses we do not need.

Finally, we often hear in your Lordships’ House that these are crowded islands. The crowding has one very large cause: 50% of the land is owned by 1% of the people, so 99% of people are excluded from half of our land. An Environment Bill surely has to offer access to more of it—a great deal more—for food growing, nature and recreation. They are not making any more land, so we have to share it out fairly.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made reference to Lord Montrose. He is in fact the Duke of Montrose. I call the next speaker.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Lord Bishop of Salisbury (Valedictory Speech)]

My Lords, I have not been in the House in person since the first week of February. Sitting on the Front Bench earlier with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln, I found myself wondering whether both of us had misjudged the timing of our retirements. I have led on the environment for the Church of England for seven years and have been a Member of the House for six. It has been a privilege as well as a responsibility and I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken kindly of what has been achieved; of course, it could never be enough.

With an eye towards retirement, I had thought that last year, 2020, would have provided a good conclusion, with the Lambeth Conference of Bishops from the Anglican Communion, COP 26 and this Environment Bill. All were postponed, so I find myself standing for the last time in this House without the prospect of being able to engage in the detailed scrutiny and revision that will make what is, in many ways, a good Bill better. Of course, my colleagues will contribute, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford has already. I thank the Minister for meeting the Bishops in preparation for this debate.

The care of creation is an important theme for Christians and all faith communities, but young people repeatedly say that we are not doing enough. At the last General Synod in person before the pandemic, a motion I proposed was amended for the Church of England to aim for net zero by 2030. I resisted it unsuccessfully. Those making the amendment said that we have to respond to the climate emergency and pick up the pace of our own change. This is complicated and there is a big difference in temperament between realists and prophets. The impact of that vote, however, has been to energise the Church of England in a new way and we are working towards the 2030 target with more urgent realism.

I say all this because, while I welcome the Bill, in a Parliament that has recognised the climate emergency, the Government are nothing like ambitious enough. We need to make the most of this opportunity to replace EU legislation and exceed its ambition and effectiveness in addressing fundamental issues of the environment and about the way we live. It matters a great deal that we address the role of the OEP and bottom out its relationship with the Government and the excellent Climate Change Committee, and that we establish how targets will be set.

The Bill ought to shape the work of every government department. Individuals make choices within the framework of legislation which makes the market. The Bill will and ought to shape the way we live now, not just in the middle distance and long-term future. This is a time of enormous change. We can be encouraged by the scale of changes in our behaviour in response to the pandemic and daunted that a similar scale of change is needed every year to 2030 if we are to meet the 2050 target for carbon neutrality of the Paris Agreement.

There is an obvious spiritual dimension to the Bill. Gus Speth, a scientist who used to be the director of the Natural Resources Defense Council in the United States, said:

“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”


Politicians, or any of us alone, cannot do that either.

Last September, Christiana Figueres showed the bishops a cartoon, which has since become well known, of a series of increasingly large waves crashing in on a small, urban shore: the pandemic, the economy, the climate and the environment. Although each needs to be addressed in its own terms, Pope Francis is right to see them as a single piece and as a challenge to the way we understand ourselves in relation to God, one another and the whole creation. The world’s faiths are all a resource for the way in which we live together in this one room of God’s creation. In our ecumenism, we have to pay attention to the economy—helpfully understood in the way of the Dasgupta review—and to the laws, ecology and wisdom of the house.

We cannot depend on techno-optimism to dig us out of a hole and we will need to answer questions about restraint. What is enough? We cannot continue to consume as we do. A new creativity is needed. There are opportunities for the UK to exercise leadership in our hosting of the G7, this week, and COP 26 in November. The big lesson of the pandemic is that we are local and global, and that in the existential issues we face no one is safe until everyone is safe. The golden rule of every religion and philosophical tradition is to do to others as we would have them do to us; it is enlightened self-interest. That has implications for the global vaccination programme and for overseas aid.

The Bill addresses the legislative framework for our care of the environment but what underlies it is the way we human beings see ourselves. In the diocese of Salisbury, which is one of the most ancient settled landscapes in Europe and has a wonderful geology hundreds of millions of years old, this bishop knows something about the humility needed in our care of the earth, as well as the creative wisdom and ambition that has given such progress to human well-being. Most people want to do the right thing. We need a legislative framework that will help us to do so, and courageous politicians capable of seeing the need for new-world thinking in the light of what we are learning from our present experience.

It has been a privilege to make a small contribution to the workings of this House and to pray for this one small room in God’s big house. I thank your Lordships for your purposeful and expert collaboration and companionship. I thank the staff of the House for their unfailing helpfulness and courteousness, and the former and present Lord Speakers and their deputies. I wish your Lordships well in your consideration of this crucial Bill and will continue to pray for you in all your deliberations.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

I am sure the House would wish me to express thanks and best wishes to the right reverend Prelate. I call the next speaker, Baroness McIntosh of Pickering.