Plastic Waste

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Teverson]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking following the decision of the Government of China to restrict imports of foreign waste.

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

My Lords, since China’s announcement the Government have raised their concerns on the scope and scale of the restrictions through the EU and WTO. We are working with local government and industry to minimise the impacts on public health and the environment and to assist in assessing alternative markets. We want to improve the quality of materials collected for recycling and reform the producer responsibility scheme for packaging to reduce waste.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and for his longer-term vision. However, the Government have been slow on this. We have a crisis. First, will the Minister guarantee that landfill will not increase significantly in the short term? Secondly, when warehousing or providing greater storage of waste material while we find a market for it, will the Environment Agency and other agencies make sure that pollution locally does not happen and fire hazards are kept to a minimum?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, since the Government heard of China’s decision in July, a great deal of work has been done. I can assure your Lordships’ on that. It is clear that the last resort is always landfill. More reuse, recycling and energy recovery in this country is the top priority. Landfill will always be the last resort. The noble Lord is right about the role of the Environment Agency, which is very important. It has been working with key partners and issuing guidance. It is important that the well-being of the environment is the number one priority,

Recycling

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, this is why we want to make progress. I was very alarmed to hear that 70% of food and drink waste comes from households. In fact, £700-worth of food is thrown away each year by a family of four, so we all have to try to change some of our behaviour. It is precisely why we need to encourage councils, 50% of which now have a food waste collection service. We are looking for that to increase. We also need to ensure that households no longer buy and throw away 20% of food.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, one of the most successful acts of the coalition Government was the 5p charge on plastic bags, which has reduced the problem considerably. What is the Government’s position on putting a charge on coffee cups, a large number of which are not properly recyclable? That would make a huge difference to our sustainable economy for the future and what we throw away.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right. We need to work strongly on improving our record in recycling. That is why the Paper Cup Recycling and Recovery Group is examining this matter in much more detail; it is really important to make progress on this. I am very conscious that at Defra we now use half the number of cups that we did in 2013, and I want to do much better than that. This is all work that needs to be done very quickly.

Plans to Improve the Natural Environment and Animal Welfare

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I note, first, that I am a board member of the Marine Management Organisation.

Normally in these debates I have to remind people that there is a marine environment and that it is as important as the land environment, but the noble Earl has already stressed the marine environment. Perhaps because of David Attenborough and his current series, we are all rather more aware of marine than we were in the past.

I will make a couple of points in that area. The first is about our future management of stocks. Although certain parts of the industry may be quite strong in their bravado about the quantity of fish resources in European waters that are within in the UK EEZ, none of the precious stocks takes any notice of political boundaries and—to state the obvious—they circulate. Their spawning grounds are often in other areas of the North Sea or western waters. It is really important for the Government to make absolutely clear that, in our future relationships if Brexit happens, our decisions are not only science-based but that we continue to make decisions about fisheries, quotas or the technical methods in liaison with other European states—whether Norway and the Faroes outside the European Union or our current European partners. That is essential. There is no room for competitive removal of stocks from within our waters in future years.

The other area that knows no boundaries is plastics. I will not go into that any further because other noble Lords have mentioned it, but I welcome the Government’s intention to stop one-use plastics, which will be of huge benefit not just to marine life but to our terrestrial environment and ecology as well.

However, I want to bring to the House’s attention, although it may not be needed, one bit of really good news that has happened recently. It is the decision by the international community, particularly in the far north of the planet, to declare the Arctic Ocean as a non-fishing zone until scientific evidence—which I doubt will ever justify it—can be considered to decide what happens. This is a major step forward. I was privileged to chair the Arctic Committee of this House a couple of years ago and it was one of our key recommendations. I will be interested to hear from the Minister whether we will be a signatory to that agreement or how we will help it to be implemented, because it is a very positive step. It is the one time perhaps that the world has decided to do something before the problem arises rather than afterwards.

I welcome very much the Secretary of State’s intention to replace the current methods of enforcing environmental law at European and national level such as the Commission and the European Court of Justice. The Energy and Environment Sub-Committee that I chair today received a letter from the Secretary of State going through that. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, we do not know yet what those powers will be; I understand that this is going out for consultation in the new year. We must make no mistake that the real power of the Commission and the European Court of Justice, particularly the Commission, is the power of infraction. Ministers are concerned that they are not found to have failed to implement or go against European or national laws, and are concerned about the fines enforced. The power of any organisation to fine will determine whether it cuts the mustard or not. It is unlikely that the organisation will have those imperatives but that is what is needed. It would be wrong if we did not implement our own laws that have been agreed and passed by Parliament.

No one has yet mentioned clean air although I am sure that other noble Lords will do, but we have been extremely laggardly in terms of applying our own legislation. It has a direct effect on people’s health and on us as we go about our business in the capital and other cities. I hope that the Minister will be able to say something about the progress of addressing that breach as it returns to British courts.

On animal welfare, again I welcome the various pronouncements made by the Secretary of State, but I regret that the amendment tabled in the House of Commons to recognise the sentience of animals was rejected and I do not agree that our current legislation covers this point broadly enough. It is something that we will have to consider when the withdrawal Bill arrives in this House. But the real problem I have on the animal welfare side is much as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has said. I am sure that the Minister will encourage us not to have any fears in this area, but if the Secretary of State for International Trade or Ministers in DExEU were talking to us, I suspect that we might be given a different message. If we seek to make trade deals, particularly with South America, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, which have already contested some of our agreements in the WTO over tariff-rate quotas, we will find it very difficult indeed to maintain our animal welfare standards. They are not recognised by the WTO as valid barriers and ways to exclude trade, so we will find it difficult to reconcile the different views that exist around the Cabinet table. Until those views at Cabinet level are reconciled, I do not think we can take it for granted that the Defra view, which I applaud in many ways, will be the one that finally holds sway.

I was going to talk about EU vets. Again, I welcome the introduction of video cameras in abattoirs and it will be a great step forward when that happens. However, we need the 95% of our meat hygiene vets who are European Union citizens to believe that they are welcome in this country and can continue to give us the benefit of their knowledge, resources and scientific skill.

Brexit: Farm Support

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, what I can say is that we definitely think that public money should reward environmentally responsible land use. That is the reform that we think is important. We wish to continue to support the agricultural sector, but if public money is to be used it should be to ensure, with 70% of the land in this country farmed, that our farmland is playing its part in enhancing the environment.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s commitment to animal welfare in future expenditure, but when we have free trade agreements with countries such as the United States, Argentina and New Zealand, which have much lower levels of animal welfare, will not the agricultural clauses that are bound to be in those FTAs fundamentally undermine British farmers and British animal welfare?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the Secretary of State has been very clear that we will not in any way allow animals to come in that are produced to a lower standard using compromised welfare standards as compared with our own very high-quality produce, which is our great British brand. Let us be clear: we do not propose to permit any product to come in that has lower animal welfare standards. We are not going to compromise on that.

Brexit: Agriculture and Farm Animal Welfare (European Union Committee Report)

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

That this House takes note of the Reports from the European Union Committee, Brexit: agriculture (20th Report, Session 2016–17, HL Paper 169) and Brexit: farm animal welfare (5th Report, HL Paper 15).

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, the common agricultural policy has probably not been one of the most popular policies of the European Union over the past 40 years in the United Kingdom. Successful as it was in its original years in ensuring food security for the European continent after many years of warfare and trial, when we joined in the 1970s it was perhaps seen as the main reason for the large budget contribution that the United Kingdom made to the European Union. I remember all too well in the 1980s the structural problems, with the milk powder mountains and wine lakes. More recently, we have had schemes such as set-aside that were not particularly successful, the issue of the green pound and all the other bits of Eurocrat jargon that surround the CAP.

At the moment, under the most recent form of funding, the new system for landowners means that the more land you own, the more subsidy you get, so the barley barons get most of the cash, our food prices are higher than the world average, small farms are still going out of business and rural biodiversity is still declining. We can look at the common agricultural policy and say that it has not been an overwhelming success for the United Kingdom—and perhaps not for Europe. It still takes 36% of the European budget, although that has hugely declined from more than half the budget over the life cycle of the common agricultural policy.

You could say that if there is one area where Brexit has to work, it must be agriculture. Indeed, we heard much evidence of the various opportunities from our withdrawal under Brexit to move away from the common agricultural policy. The first is cheap food. At the moment, it is true to say that, with external tariffs for food, farmers are relatively protected, and some of our witnesses suggested that if we moved away from the common agricultural policy post Brexit, food prices could reduce by 7% or 10%.

We have an excellent opportunity to save taxpayers’ money. At the moment, under the CAP, our farmers and landowners receive €28 billion per annum in subsidy. It accounts for 40% to 60% of farm income. We could stop that, as the New Zealanders did in the 1980s, take it back into the Treasury and use that money elsewhere.

We could get rid of some of the rules. We found it a little difficult to find too many rules that the agricultural industry wanted to get rid of immediately, but the three-crop rule was one of them and there are others, perhaps more contentious ones such as on pesticides, that could be removed. In terms of animal welfare, we could move the gauge up or down. We could take more opportunities to drive our own welfare standards within agriculture.

Of course, we do not have to give all those funds back to our own taxpayers; we could use them perhaps more intelligently in terms of environmental management, rural development, integrated policies and making sure that agriculture is not an isolated area of policy but that it ties in well with climate change and broader environmental policy.

The United Kingdom is a big food importer. Our trade balance with the European Union is some €18 billion per annum. That surely gives us some leverage to attract free trade agreements from other countries across the world that want access to that market. Clearly, we have access to most of those elsewhere already so that would not change greatly. That is a list of important positives from disengaging from the CAP as part of the Brexit process. We heard a lot of that from many our witnesses.

Of course, there are challenges as well, which are significant. First, regarding trade, some 80% of our exports of agricultural produce go to the European Union. If we add in the food sector and those countries where the EU has free trade agreements from which we benefit, the number goes up to 97%. Part of that is around perishability. It is much easier to export products to geographically close areas and, obviously, it is part of the single market. Indeed, at the moment the EU external tariff is 54% on dairy products and some 22% on cereals. That gives an idea of the sort of level of tariff barriers there could be.

Of course, there will be non-tariff barriers as well. We as a committee are not saying in any way that we would not be able to reach a trade agreement, but if we did not, clearly some of those non-tariff barriers would be even greater. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Trees, will tell us about phytosanitary conditions and all of those other non-tariff issues.

We would hope to trade at least on World Trade Organization terms, but I hope there will be much better opportunities with the EU in a future agreement. However, already we have issues with the WTO over tariff rate quotas. This is already a key area. The Government have been successful in finding agreement with the European Union over the splitting of these quotas, but immediately that has caused a reaction in the United States, New Zealand and Brazil objecting to that solution and opening up that whole area of future tariff rate quotas with both the EU and the UK. It gives a taste of future meddling and perhaps vexatious intervention that some of these issues will create.

People are one big area the industry is concerned about and that is why being able to retain current EU staff and workers in this country, and in this sector in particular, is important. It is well known, and has been said many times, that 90% of our vets in abattoirs, an important part of our animal welfare programme, are non-UK EU nationals. In both food processing and agriculture, we require a large number of workers from the EU. Yes, we could replace them from other parts of the world, but that obviously will depend on our migration policy. Already we have difficulty in attracting and retaining people. An issue that came over very strongly is that agricultural workers in particular are skilled workers. The way in which they are able to harvest is very skilled but not in terms of a Home Office definition. It is an area where automation cannot substitute in the medium or short term. People are a key factor.

The committee welcomes the Government’s response on funding, which is guaranteed at current cash levels up to the next election. In reality, after that—this is not something that we should blame the Government for—the public and taxpayers will find it difficult under continued austerity to justify the amount of money that goes to this sector. So there will be a real issue around selling that deal. Of course, that may be around being able to guarantee better environmental management of all the public services that farming provides.

There is an issue around devolution. One of the things that the CAP provides is a common framework for agricultural policy not just for all member states but within the United Kingdom. Yet, importantly, agriculture is devolved. How do you make sure that there is a continued single market within the United Kingdom? Will we have four different regimes? Indeed, policy stability is one area that I had not thought of but it came through from some of our witnesses. The CAP might be difficult to change, but at least it meant the future could be planned to a large degree. Will that remain? In Ireland, there is an issue not so much of devolution but of cross-border trade and supply chains, so there are particular challenges.

Our report on welfare received a great deal of media attention on, for example, beef hormones and chlorinated chicken, which is not really a welfare issue, but under international pressure for other trade deals will those welfare standards be challenged? Our witnesses, particularly from this sector, were very keen that welfare standards should not decline post Brexit.

Lastly, in terms of the challenges of which there are many more for those who have read the full report, there is Defra itself. We have said many times in our environmental and fisheries reports that the workload on Defra is huge. Apart from being sympathetic to the Minister on the Front Bench, we again ask whether there are sufficient resources for Defra to deliver legal certainty and all those policies in that huge area over the period.

If I may start to conclude my remarks, there is a real dilemma in this area. Two approaches can be taken in terms of benefits and potential positives about Brexit and the negatives. Will we become a low-tariff, competitive New Zealand-style economy, open to free trade, open to those opportunities to bring down food prices and move on those deals where high-quality food and welfare standards will be difficult to enforce, given the sort of negotiations we will have with countries such as Australia, Argentina, Brazil and particularly the United States? Or will we continue to be a country, outside Europe, that demands high welfare standards and high-quality food and that looks to protect our hill farmers? It is absolutely clear that all our livestock farming cannot compete with the economies of scale, and particularly the lower welfare standards, in the large economies of the United States, Australia and New Zealand, perhaps, but also Argentina and Brazil. They can be characterised as the Liam Fox version and the Michael Gove view of Brexit—interesting but the Government will have to resolve that dilemma.

Will the Minister be able to include agriculture more successfully in his 25-year environmental plan? What is going to happen about tariff rate quotas? How does he see the whole WTO negotiations? How can we have a farming Bill when at present we do not know what the end destination is? Will the Minister reconfirm our commitment to high animal welfare standards? How does he see the transition?

Some 71% of land in the UK is devoted to agriculture, which employs 800,000 throughout the food supply chain and is 7% of the economy, worth £100 billion of value added. It is a vital part of our economy and our future. This raises as many challenges as it does opportunities. I beg to move.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, I respectfully remind noble Lords of the advisory speaking time of six minutes. There is another debate after this, and I am sure those noble Lords would be most grateful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, the hour is late and another debate is due to take place. I thank all noble Lords for their passionate contributions, including that of the Minister. One thing I want to do, in particular on behalf of the members of my sub-committee, is thank our clerk at the time, Celia Stenderup-Petersen. She was an excellent clerk for our committee, but ironically and largely because of Brexit, she has since left her post and now has a job with the Danish foreign office. We wish her well. I also thank Jennifer Mills, our policy analyst, and our special advisers, Professor Fiona Smith on the agriculture report and Caroline Spence on the welfare report. I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Cunningham of Felling and Lord Trees, who have left the committee.

I finish by pointing out that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said something that is absolutely right: we are at a fork where the Government must make a decision. I was also very impressed by the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden. In the end, he was the only speaker to describe the Government’s official response—I do not include the Minister’s response to the debate in this—as “woolly”, which is an appropriate adjective for the subject. Until the issue of the fork is resolved, that is inevitably the Government’s position. However, I thank the Minister for providing clarity on a number of issues from Defra’s side, and I hope we are given the same clarity, perhaps in a different way, from the Department for International Trade, so that in future we have a congruence of both departments.

Motion agreed.

Agriculture: Foreign Workers

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, that is one of the things we will want to look at as we leave the European Union.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, this is not about just seasonal workers or unskilled workers. As the Minister will know, some 80% of vets in our abattoirs, who enable them to operate with the right welfare standards, are EU citizens. How are we going to retain those skilled and much-required people who are currently keeping our food processing industry moving?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord because I was at the BVA and RCVS reception yesterday, where I know a number of noble Lords were also in attendance. This is an important issue and an element of the negotiations that we want to deal with as promptly as possible. Yes, we do rely on and warmly welcome the support we have from EU national vets, who are hugely important to us.