Environment Bill

Lord Smith of Finsbury Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Finsbury (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I remind the House first of my interests as declared in the register.

The Bill is broadly welcome. It says it has ambition, it aims to set its sights high, and it betokens a wish on the part of the Government to have strong environmental standards in what is, alas, a post-Brexit world—so far, so good. But it does not get everything right, and there are three things I would like to focus on.

First, it is fundamentally important that the new office for environmental protection—the OEP—is robustly independent. Many noble Lords have touched on this point. The Bill rightly makes no provision for the Government to be able to give instructions to the OEP, but they can give guidance. The problem, of course, is that guidance is pretty much the same as an instruction when it comes from the Secretary of State. When I first took on the role of chair of the Environment Agency, when Hilary Benn was Secretary of State, I remember that the agency felt not only that it had permission to speak out publicly on the state of the environment and issues affecting it but that it had a duty to do so—and we did speak out, sometimes in ways that the Government did not like. But when a new Government and Secretary of State came in in 2010, we were told that we should not speak out publicly—that we were welcome to give private advice to government but that it should remain private. The public voice was gone. The same thing must not happen to the OEP. There should be a duty on the OEP, spelled out in the Bill, to speak out publicly on issues of concern for the environment. The role of the Government should not be one of guiding or instructing but one simply of proposing. The OEP should, in other words, have its independence and voice guaranteed in the same way, for example, as the Committee on Climate Change.

The second issue I want to highlight relates to water use. In some parts of the country—Cambridgeshire is a prominent example—there is a serious danger to the levels of flow in and the survival of the wonderful chalk streams that are a unique part of the English landscape. Quite simply, we have to draw down less water. There are many answers to this hugely important problem, and in Cambridge Water, which I chair, we are exploring all of them. But one of them must lie in helping all of us to conserve more water. We waste too much. Of course, the Bill contains measures on water abstraction, but it also presents an ideal opportunity to make two important legislative changes to help water conservation: first, a mandatory water-efficiency label on water-using products in exactly the same way as energy-efficiency labelling; and secondly, a change to building regulations to promote the recycling of rainwater and improvements to water efficiency in any new home or building constructed. Both measures provide very simple ways of ensuring that we use water more wisely.

The third issue to highlight is access for the public to nature and the natural environment. Surely the past year and a half have taught us something we already knew but had too often forgotten: access to nature is essential for our well-being, our health, our ability to exercise and the welfare of our souls. One of my proudest moments as a Minister was helping to bring in the legislation that made a right to roam a reality for open country, mountain and moorland, but this need goes much further—to the fields at the edge of town, the banks of canals and rivers, the local woodlands and the green spaces that we all love. Making sure that public access to these is available should surely be part of any ambitious environmental policy, yet in the Bill at the moment the long-term environmental targets and the environmental improvement plans provide only for a permission to consider access to nature, not a requirement. This must surely change.

The Bill offers a golden opportunity to commit ourselves as a nation to the very highest values for our environment and our biodiversity. It is far too important to be a matter of party politics and I am grateful to the Minister for reaching out to many of us around the Chamber. But let us aim to be more courageous, more ambitious and more environmentally confident, for the sake of all our futures.