Environment Bill

Luke Pollard Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 26th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

The climate crisis is the most pressing issue facing our planet. The actions we take in the next few years will determine whether we can address the climate emergency or whether we pass on to our children the rotten inheritance of living on a dying planet. It is therefore with great responsibility that we debate this Bill.

The Government are calling this a “landmark Bill” and “world-leading legislation,” but I fear that is not quite right. The Secretary of State should be more honest, because this still seems like a draft Bill—a Bill that is not quite there. This is an okay Bill, but by no means the groundbreaking legislation we have been promised.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Does he share my concern and disappointment that the Secretary of State did not mention part 8? Part 8 refers to the potential for divergence from the incredibly important regulations on the chemical industry that affect our entire manufacturing sector, not just the chemical industry itself. Does he share my concern that part 8 has the ability to diverge, with serious consequences for most of our economy?

[Luke Pollard]

The details on regression and non-regression are an important part of this Bill. We need to make sure we maintain our high standards, because those high standards, especially in the chemical industry, drive jobs and employment right across the country. Any risk of divergence affects the ability of those products to be sold overseas, which affects the ability of jobs to be held back in our country. I am glad my hon. Friend has raised that issue.

Some hon. Members will remember when Parliament adopted Labour’s motion to declare a climate emergency. For me, it presents us with a very simple challenge: now that Parliament has declared a climate emergency, what are we doing differently? It is a challenge to us as individuals and to businesses, but it is especially a challenge to lawmakers, Ministers and regulators.

Because the climate crisis is real, we need bolder, swifter action to decarbonise our economy and to protect vulnerable habitats. We need to recognise that the crisis is not just about carbon, although it is. It is about other greenhouse gases, too, and it is an ecological emergency, with our planet’s animals, birds and insect species in decline and their habitats under threat.

The water we drink, the food we consume and the fish in our seas are all affected by pollutants, from plastics to chemicals. As we have seen from the floods caused by Storms Ciara and Dennis, the climate crisis is also leading to more extreme weather more often and with more severe consequences.

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

The National Flood Forum has noted that extreme and flash flooding will be one of the greatest effects of the climate crisis. In my constituency, we have experienced unprecedented flooding, and the River Taff’s levels rose by more than a metre above all previous records. If that is not a wake-up call, I do not know what is. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to act urgently to secure better climate protections, to ensure that all other towns, villages and cities across the world are not impacted in the way my community has been this week?

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Pollard]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention and for all the work that she and her Welsh colleagues have been doing in supporting communities that are under water. We need much firmer action. We need a proper plan for flooding that reverses the austerity cuts made to our flood defences, and that removes the requirement for match funding which favours affluent communities over poorer ones. We also need urgent action from the Government to address the worrying aspects of the legacy of the coal industry in Wales, which could result in a real disaster if action is not taken. I encourage her to carry on campaigning on that.

As my hon. Friend has mentioned, Britain is not unique in the challenges facing us in terms of the climate catastrophe. In many cases, what will happen in the global south will be even more disastrous than what is happening in the UK. That is why action cannot wait.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware of concerns that the Bill does not focus enough on the UK’s global footprint, so does he agree that the Government should introduce a mandatory due diligence mechanism, which would help to reduce the UK’s global footprint?

[Luke Pollard]

I am grateful for that intervention. It is a good reminder that one way in which we have decarbonised in the past few years has simply been by exporting our carbon; we export not only waste, but the production of the most carbon-intensive products that we use. The hon. Gentleman raises a good point.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Luke Pollard]

I will make some progress before taking further interventions, mindful of the people who are to follow.

As a nation, we need a gold-standard Environment Bill. I agree with the Minister that we need world-leading legislation, but this is not it. This still looks like a draft Bill; there has not been complete pre-legislative scrutiny for the entire Bill, which I think it needs; it lacks coherence as between its different sections; and it lacks the ambition to tackle the climate crisis as a whole with a comprehensive and renewed strategy. Labour will be a critical friend to Ministers during this process. We will be not be opposing the Bill today, but in that spirit we hope that Ministers will look seriously at adopting the measures we will put forward to improve and strengthen it, especially in Committee.

I have a concern about the positioning of the Bill: it has been spun so hard by successive Governments, and Secretaries of State in particular, that it cannot possibly deliver the grand soundbites that it has been set up as doing. That means that the heavy lifting required now to address our decarbonisation efforts and protect our communities may be hampered, because the Bill will not be able to deliver on those lofty promises. I worry that unless we match those grand soundbites with determined action, we will be failing our children and the communities we are here to serve.

In the time left, I want to cover three key areas of concern about the Bill. The first relates to Labour’s belief that non-regression in environmental standards must be a legal requirement. The second relates to how the new Office for Environmental Protection needs to be strengthened, and the third relates to how the ambition of Government press releases needs to be translated into genuine delivery in the Bill. First, on standards and targets, we were promised during the election that the Government would not lower our food standards, despite all the evidence pointing to the contrary, in post-Brexit trade deals. As we have already seen with the debates on the Agriculture Bill, Ministers have chosen to leave the door open for the undercutting of British farm and food standards in post-Brexit trade deals. The new Environment Secretary cannot even guarantee that chlorinated chicken or lactic acid-washed chicken will not be allowed into Britain as a result of the US trade deal. The rough ride he got with the National Farmers Union this morning will just be the start if he does not come to the realisation that many of us on both sides of this House have, that the commitment that he and others have given must be put into law. We cannot allow our standards to be undercut, and that principle of not allowing our standards to be undercut applies to this Bill too. We need to ensure that non-regression on environmental standards with the EU is a floor that we must not go below.

[Geraint Davies]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Luke Pollard]

I am going to make a bit of progress, but I will come back to my hon. Friend in a moment if I can.

We simply cannot allow our environmental standards to be undercut in the same way as our food and animal welfare standards risk being undercut with trade deals. We need to ensure that we have measures approaching dynamic alignment with the European Union so that Britain is not seen as a country with lower standards than our European friends. Lower regulatory standards and lower animal welfare standards, especially on imported food, would see damage to ecosystems and habitats and a downward pressure on regulation in future, which would harm our efforts to decarbonise our economy. I want to see the lofty words said by all the Ministers on the Front Bench and the Prime Minister about non-regression put in the Bill. Where is the legal commitment to non-regression on environmental protections that the British people have asked for? Why is it not clearly in the Bill? If we are to have any hope of tackling the climate emergency in a meaningful way, we need to be aiming towards net zero by 2030, not by 2050.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

On net zero by 2030, does the hon. Gentleman not recognise what the Committee on Climate Change and Baroness Brown recognise, which is that reaching net zero by 2050 will be a huge challenge for this country? Blithely throwing around “2030” as though this is easy is doing a disservice not just this House, but to the people watching.

[Luke Pollard]

I am a big fan of the hon. Gentleman’s Instagram feed and follow it with great passion, and sometimes I feel a bit disappointed by interventions such as that. We cannot afford not to hit net zero by 2030, but the Government are currently on track for 2099. A far-off date many, moons away will not deal with the climate emergency and will not protect our habitats that need protecting. That drive needs to be there, though we know that for some sectors achieving net zero target by 2030 will be very challenging, and for some achieving it by 2050 will be very challenging, with agriculture being one of those sectors. The NFU’s plan to hit net zero by 2040 is very challenging. If sectors are to deliver net zero by any date, we will need some sectors to go faster and further than others to create carbon headroom, with the requirement that that progress is not double-counted in carbon calculations. Sadly, this supposedly world-leading Environment Bill does not have a single target in it. It contains no duty on Ministers to ensure that Britain decarbonises and stops the climate crisis getting any worse.

Secondly, I turn to the Office for Environmental Protection—the proposed new regulator. I know from previous debates that some Conservative Members are not too keen on the idea of a new Government outfit created in this space, but I agree with Ministers that we need a robust regulator. Sadly, the one being proposed in the Bill is not strong enough in our view. We need it to have teeth, and a remit that is unaffected by Government patronage. It needs to carefully consider the science and to have a bite that would make Ministers think twice about missing their targets. That is what the Office for Environmental Protection should be, but, sadly, that is not what the Bill envisages.

The new regulator does not have true independence from Government. It has no legal powers to hold the Government to account in the way it needs to. Approving its chair via a Government-led Select Committee, on which the Government have a majority, is not sufficient. Given that Ministers have been dragged time and time again through the courts for missing air quality targets, how can we ensure that this regulator would make that a thing of the past and not a repeat prescription?

We need Ministers to do as Members on both sides have suggested today and adopt World Health Organisation targets for air quality and particulates. We need regulators to have teeth to make sure that those targets are enforced, and we need to make sure that the new regulator sits and works in a complementary way in and with what is an already quite congested regulatory space on the environment.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Prospect the union has written to me expressing its concern that only 100 staff will be employed by the Office for Environmental Protection. Does the shadow Minister share my concerns about this under-resourcing?

[Luke Pollard]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Since 2010 we have seen that quangos and regulators can still exist but their ability to deliver that regulation and the quality of that regulation depends on the resources. If a political lever is being applied by Ministers—as I have said before, I have a lot of time for the current Environment Secretary, but that does not necessarily mean that anyone who follows him would have the same approach—if budgets were to be changed and if political patronage were to be applied in terms of the OEP’s leadership and board, that could affect the outcomes. Resourcing does matter.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Luke Pollard]

I will not take any further interventions, so that I can finish my remarks. [Interruption.] I say that, but that would have been a good time for one. I come to the section of my speech about water, unless someone would like to intervene briefly. [Laughter.]

[Bim Afolami]

I do so in the spirit of kindness, but there is a serious point here. Luton airport is in the constituency next to mine, and one concern that many of my constituents have as a result is about air quality. All of our constituencies will have separate issues. What is the hon. Gentleman’s view as to how we can use this Bill to apply to specific instances at specific times—for example, to deal with poor air quality around Luton airport?

[Luke Pollard]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman and will like more of his Instagram posts as a reward for that kind intervention. We do need to address air quality around airports and transport modes in particular, but the ability to do that is predicated on the data, which is why my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) made the point that he did earlier. It is important to make sure that we take action based on reliable evidence, which means that we need the right testing stations. At the moment there are far too few air-quality monitoring stations. We need to go forward by embracing having monitoring stations on more schools, more GP surgeries and in more areas with a greater level of public dwelling. That is how we should address the issue. For airports in particular, it is about surface access and making sure that people can get to airports more easily.

I have been coughing and spluttering for a while, so I will rush through the rest of my speech so that I do not take up anyone else’s time. As Conservative Members have said, the part of the Bill that deals with water does not go far enough to deal with some of the issues relating to water poverty, or do anything to address per capita consumption or meaningful water labelling or to solve the challenge of where we are going to get the water that we need for the homes we need to build in future. For the Bill to be genuinely world leading, I would have hoped that the Government would adopt some of the current groundbreaking ideas in water policy, such as water neutrality, which is the idea that for every new home that we build we will not provide any more water resources—they will be offset by water efficiency in our existing housing stock. There are some really grand opportunities and fantastic water innovations, which is why we need the Bill to go further on water efficiency in our homes, actions on leaks and investment in water-efficient technologies. We also need a war on leaky loos, as that is important.

I would like the Government to look at a commitment whereby the water industry moves to using 100% renewable energy within the next five years. Ministers already have the power to do that, given the regulatory powers of Ofwat and DEFRA.

Finally, the Secretary of State has already mentioned that the Bill includes a section on trees that will allow trees to be chopped down in a different way. The Bill does not include any new powers to plant trees. That seems to be an omission: I imagine Members from all parties will look at the Bill and say, “Surely that’s not right.” Given that the Government are missing their tree-planting target by 71% already, further powers to chop down trees do not seem to be the priority. We need to look into not only how to plant more trees but at different types of biodiversity and habitats, and make sure that carbon is sequestered in the right way. That is really important, because if we are to address the loss of species, both in the UK and globally, we need to take action.

COP26 provides us with a global platform to showcase the very best of our global thinking, our action and our legislation. Currently, the Bill does not deliver the groundbreaking global platform that we need to take into COP26. I hope that Ministers will take seriously the concerns that I have raised and that my Opposition colleagues will address when they speak later, because there is a real desire on both sides of the House to improve the legislation and make it as genuinely world leading as the Secretary of State aspires for it to be. To that end, I invite the Secretary of State to work with us to improve the legislation; simply voting down every amendment so that we keep a clean sheet will not deliver that. I hope that he will take that challenge in the spirit in which it is meant so that we can work together to improve the legislation. The climate crisis needs to be addressed and it will not be sufficiently addressed if we allow the Bill to pass unaltered.