Plant Protection Products (Miscellaneous Amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Lords Chamber

There are some significant issues around costs, on whether the precautionary principle will be upheld, and on how we will hold the Secretary of State to account on an issue which is of such importance to human health and the environment.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a fairly fundamental objection to this set of regulations. I am sure that most of the detail is absolutely correct and necessary and I cannot say that I have read every sentence of these two regulations, but I have long held, going back to my days as the Minister in Defra, that the current regime for the regulation of pesticides, both at British and European level, has been inadequate for a number of reasons, some of which have already been touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. I am rather afraid that the “solution” of leaving the European Union is going to aggravate that position.

Most of the issues I have approached the department on in recent years have related to human health, but it is a much wider issue than that. I believe that the totality of the approach to pesticide regulation does not take into account the widespread effects of misuse of pesticides, the lack of enforcement on the way pesticides are used and the relative ease with which new pesticides and modified pesticides come on to the market. In some cases, the EU regulation has actually been held back by previous British interventions. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, I commend the current Secretary of State on neonicotinoids, but in general it is the Brits who have held back and there has been a lot of pressure—corporate pressure, one has to say—on the totality of the system. This could reinforce that tendency.

I understand, and I have been in some contact with the department about, the need to introduce provisions on chemicals broadly—on REACH provisions. These regulations tend to mirror, in a sense, the broader regulation structure of REACH. In the main, I think it is very sensible to maintain the success of the REACH provisions, but pesticides are different. They are different because they have a serious and often unacknowledged human health impact. More particularly, I want to emphasise tonight the effect they have on the environment in general: the effect of pesticides on the air, the water and the soil.

Soil has been degraded as a result of the overuse of pesticides. Pesticides in the air have affected both human and particularly insect life: this week we have seen very serious effects in the form of the worldwide reduction in insect life, some of which has been caused by pesticides here and elsewhere, and on the water system. One of the successes, to some extent, of the water framework directive has been to reduce that effect; nevertheless, there is still a very serious problem in our water supply, as the effect of pesticides comes through the soil, into the water and has an effect on insect life and on whatever you call those creatures that crawl on the bottom of our rivers—I am sure that my noble friend Lady Young can name them all, but I cannot—and therefore on our diversity. A lot of those are affected by the misuse or overuse of pesticides.

It is true that successive Governments have attempted to rationalise and pinpoint the use of pesticides more effectively in terms of agricultural use. However, unlike the industrial chemicals that will be covered by the transposition of arrangements on REACH, the use of pesticides—this particular form of chemical—is a matter not so much of industrial use but of agricultural use: its effect on the environment, on land management, on soil management and on air quality. I therefore find it somewhat surprising that we are to retain the HSE rather than an environmental body to oversee this. I know that the HSE has access to significant scientific information, and the transfer of a separate pesticide arrangement into the HSE probably was an improvement, but would I argue that if we are going to move to a new regime post Brexit, the appropriate body is actually the Environment Agency, because it has responsibility for agricultural practice and land use; for air, water and soil.

That is where, together with human health, pesticides have an impact. I am therefore disturbed that the whole rationale for these arrangements is to assign that role to the HSE and not to the Environment Agency and devolved environment agencies. I ask the Minister to think about that; it is not necessary, but we are moving into a new era, and the responsibility ought to be with an environmental body rather than with one which deals with the industrial use of other chemicals.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests as set out in the register. I thank the Minister for his introduction and for his courtesy in meeting us before this debate. I also thank the two noble Lords who have raised a number of important issues about these SIs, all of which I agree with. They both made very powerful points.

These SIs go to the heart of our concerns about the transposition process. This goes right back to our earlier discussions on the amendments to the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. The use of pesticides is of huge public interest—a point made by the noble Baroness—and they present significant environmental and public health challenges. It is an issue where the use of the precautionary principle is vital—supported of course by strong scientific evidence and detailed scrutiny of the potential impact of the new products.

At the moment, we have in the EU a thorough process of evaluation of products. The responsibilities for risk assessments are shared out across member states. There are clear decision-making roles for the European Food Safety Authority, the rapporteur member state, individual member states and the European Commission. All this is supported and backed up by access to the best scientific advice. While no process is perfect, there is considerable assurance that within the EU a detailed assessment of the risks has been carried out and cross-checked.

These proposals are intended to replace all of this with an assessment by the Health and Safety Executive and a decision in the hands of one person, the “competent authority” as described in the text—otherwise known as the Secretary of State. Under these proposals, full power to make, amend or revoke guidance, principles and regulations for the UK rests with the Secretary of State and the devolved Ministers. There is a major loss of scrutiny, checks and balances, and audit powers.

This really is not good enough. It does not represent an accurate transposition of the current EU provisions into UK law. It also reopens our argument about the need for an independent environment watchdog to oversee the application of these new rules. This is a point other noble Lords have made—my noble friend Lady Young made it very eloquently in the earlier debate. That watchdog clearly needs to be in place from day one. I know that the Minister has said he cannot be precise about the timetable for this, but it would be helpful if he could reassure us again that the watchdog will be in place from 1 April, and that there will be no delay.

There is another big issue about what we will lose when we transpose to the UK. How can it be acceptable that the only reporting mechanism on national decisions for new active substances will be to publish the information online, when the previous EU regime required a report to be made to the EU Commissioner and a proper process of scrutiny and approval?

It also raises once again the fact that, by leaving the EU, we are cutting ourselves off from access to a huge resource of scientific data and analysis. Should we not be taking urgent steps to agree with the EU that we will continue to share this data for mutual benefit? For example, we will no longer have access to the advice of the European Food Safety Authority and will therefore have to pay considerable sums of money to try to replicate its advice. Would it not make sense to negotiate a mutual recognition agreement with the EU so that decisions taken in the EU and the UK continue to be mutually honoured? Can the Minister say whether discussions are taking place to create a shared register of approved pesticides and a mutual recognition scheme across the EU and UK, and what the timescale is for the outcome for those discussions?