Environment Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

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

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate on the Second Reading of the Environment Bill. I am pleased that the Government have reintroduced the Bill and I am also pleased that there is a degree of co-operation with the Opposition. It is important that we get the Bill absolutely right.

In the previous Parliament, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee conducted pre-legislative scrutiny of the previous Bill, and I am pleased that the legislation has moved towards some of our recommendations. For example, I welcome the fact that the Government will set a multi-annual budget for the Office for Environmental Protection and have included climate change within its remit. We just need to make sure that there is enough money for the OEP to run properly.

I wish to make three points about how the Bill can be improved. First, concerns have been expressed that in some areas, such as target setting, the Bill might allow a weakening of standards—for example, on air quality. I welcome the plan to set a target for particulate matter, but it is planned only for 2022, and we do not know how ambitious the target might be. At this early stage, I urge the Government to set an example and match the World Health Organisation guidelines for dangerous emissions such as particulate matter. The British Heart Foundation estimates that the number of heart attacks and stroke deaths linked to air pollution could exceed 160,000 by 2030, unless action is taken. DEFRA has already carried out a study that shows that it can achieve World Health Organisation standards of 10 micrograms per cubic metre by 2030, so I urge the Government to set that target. Let us put that target into law now and use the Bill to improve human health as well as our natural environment.

Secondly, it is vital that we set up the Office for Environmental Protection now that we are outside the EU; however, it needs to be independent of Government and have the teeth to bite. The OEP will not be independent if it is constantly worrying about having its budgets cut, so will the Government commit to a multi-annual budget settlement, the enshrinement in law of which I would welcome?

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I think we all agree that we certainly do not want an OEP that is a toothless tiger; we want one that can react to and govern the climate and nature emergency in which we find ourselves. We need clarity as to whether the OEP will be set up, particularly in England and Northern Ireland, as of 1 January 2021.

[Neil Parish]

Naturally, there is the matter of how the OEP works with the devolved Administration in Northern Ireland, but I agree that it needs to have those powers. I am sure that the Secretary of State will have listened to the hon. Lady’s intervention.

The appointments process in the setting up of the OEP should follow the Office for Budget Responsibility model, in which the Treasury Committee can veto the Chancellor’s choice. I am sure that my great friend the Secretary of State would not mind giving away some of his new fiefdom to the EFRA Committee, but we will wait and see. I offer that to him—or perhaps he might offer it to me.

My final point on the OEP is that my Committee concluded that judicial review is not the most appropriate enforcement mechanism for environmental cases because it focuses on process rather than outcomes and leaves the decision making to the lawyers. That is a really important point. I welcome the tribunal model in the Bill, because I hope that it will allow environmental specialists to have a role. We need practical solutions for when the Government are in breach—such as we have with air-pollution plans—rather than lawyers and going through process all the time. We really want to make sure that we get the experts in place.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend believe it is necessary to make sure that there is a time limit for the investigations that the OEP might undertake, so that we can see a speedy reaction to any issues that may arise?

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We do not want to waste years in the courts; these things have to be done quickly. We need practical solutions for when the Government are in breach, just as we have with air pollution plans. I am still concerned that the environmental review outlined in the Bill is just a judicial review by another name. We have a great opportunity to build on our strong commitment to the environment. We all want to leave the environment in a better place than we found it. Will the Secretary of State look again at some of our Select Committee proposals, because the Bill can still be strengthened in many areas? One final point on the OEP is that the judicial review is not the most appropriate enforcement mechanism for environmental cases. We therefore need a more practical solution.

Finally, I ask the Government, as we have made a commitment to improve the environment, to look not only at the Environment Bill, but at the Agriculture Bill and the Fishing Bill, because they all fit together. As yet another round of flooding seems likely in the future, the Environment Bill will be important, as will be the Agriculture Bill. Fitting the two together with new land management projects will be a very good way of making sure that we can deliver a catchment-area basis for flooding. We can also improve our environment and work with the water companies on holding more water and on making sure that the reservoirs do not overflow. We can also look at the rewetting of peatland. All of those things can be done, but they must be linked with the Environment Bill.

Finally—I am sure that this is in the minds of Ministers and the Secretary of State—we must ensure that we join up the Environment Bill with the Agriculture and Fishing Bills, and also make sure that, as we drive towards a better environment, we do so across the whole of Government. This cannot just be done by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, because things such as delivering on air quality can only be achieved across Government.

I look forward to the Bill being read a Second time. It is taking us in the right direction, but let us also look at the independence of the OEP. We also need to make sure that tribunals deal not just with legal matters, but with environmental matters. With that, I very much welcome the Second Reading of this Bill.

Environment Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

With a four-minute limit, I call Neil Parish via video link.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con) [V]]

I thank DEFRA Ministers for their hard work on the Bill.

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has looked at the Environment Bill over the past few years. We have given it pre-legislative scrutiny and looked at the Office for Environmental Protection and issues such as plastic waste, tree planting and air quality. The Bill has come back to Parliament in several shapes and sizes, and I think that might be about to happen again. I hope that the Government are carrying over the Bill to the next Session because they want to amend it to include all my amendments on deforestation and air quality.

The Amazon is losing an area twice the size of Devon every year to deforestation. Government amendments to ban sales from illegal deforestation go some way, but we can go further still and target the finance behind that. I will speak about air quality in the second debate today; there is an environmental and public health emergency that needs swift action. I appreciate the Government’s argument that we need more time to do work on the science, but we have known about the seriousness of the situation for many years, so it cannot be put off much longer.

We also need to ensure that the Bill comes back quickly in the summer, because we currently have an environmental governance gap. The Government and public authorities are not being adequately held to account over their compliance with environmental law, and it is not the best look. The court of public opinion is ultimately our judge, so I gently suggest that the Bill should be brought back immediately in the next Session to demonstrate its importance.

Now that we are outside the EU, we do not have the Commission to fine us and hold us to account. We are rating ourselves and we need a strong protection in domestic law in this Environment Bill. We also need a strong Office for Environmental Protection, and I welcome the appointment of Dame Glenys Stacey as chairman of the OEP. Through this process, I have called for the chair to have independence from Government. Dame Glenys Stacey’s track record as an effective regulator through using both carrot and stick to hold public bodies to account means I have faith in her achieving that independence, but in common with other Government agencies the OEP needs resources and teeth to bite. The OEP will not be independent if it is constantly worrying about its budget. The Government and Ministers have excellent environmental credentials and I do not think they will water down protection in any way, but we need to act more quickly and should be a little bit braver when it comes to scrutiny.

We also have a duty now to set the right environmental laws and framework for the future Governments and generations. The Prime Minister is taking up the green recovery and DEFRA Ministers also believe in a better environment, as do many in this House and across the country. We are fortunate to be hosting COP26 later this year; it is an exciting time for environmental policy in this country. Outside the EU we have a real opportunity do better and show global leadership on issues of global importance; whether in air quality, water quality, soil health, tree planting, plastic waste or species protection, we should be ambitious with our environment policy.

This Environment Bill is a landmark Bill and the Government have put great effort into it over several years. With a few more tweaks and a firm commitment to bring the Bill back early in the next Session we can set a great example to the rest of the world and have a modern Environment Act of which we can all be proud.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We now go to a video link, and it is a Front-Bench contribution from Deirdre Brock; happy Australia Day, Deirdre.

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The amendments that I have outlined clearly show the advantages of properly defining the environmental standards for reusable nappy products, as well as how important the schemes that promote them are. I hope that the Government take this opportunity to support my amendments; they are a small step towards helping families make more environmentally conscious decisions, and I commend them to the House.

[Neil Parish]

In this second debate on the Environment Bill, I will speak to my amendment on air quality and in support of the amendment moved by the Opposition Front Bench.

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has done three inquiries on air quality in the last five years, and we are just about to publish our new air quality report. We need cleaner air across the UK, particularly in the hotspots of our cities, to improve public health. The Government are starting to take this issue very seriously, and I am glad that we have a clean air strategy that aims to cut air pollution significantly.

I am also pleased that the Bill places a duty on the Government to set two air quality targets by October 2022, one of which is for particulate matter in ambient air. However, we can and should act sooner, with an ambitious target. PM_2.5 is one of the most dangerous particulates because of its size, which means that it can be deposited in our lungs. The covid-19 pandemic has also likely resulted in a new cohort of people with ongoing breathing problems who may be more vulnerable to the harmful effects of air pollution. That is why I tabled my amendment on PM_2.5. My amendment has cross-party support and seeks to put World Health Organisation guidelines for particulate matter into law, with an attainment deadline of 2030 at the latest. Ministers have said in the past that we should not accept such an amendment because we can be even more ambitious; so why not put the target in law today and then improve it afterwards, if we can do better?

It is important to work practically across the Government to improve air quality, because an ambitious target by itself is not going to fix the issue. In 2018, we did a Select Committee inquiry across four Select Committees to show how this issue can be solved by joined-up policy. DEFRA, the Ministry for Housing Communities and Local Government, the Department for Transport and the Treasury need to work closely on this issue, and I believe that they are starting to do so.

The Government are now investing huge amounts of money in greener transport including electric cars. I welcome the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. With more ultra-low emissions vehicles, we need more charging stations, rapid chargers and other incentives to build confidence and help people to switch over to electric cars in the next decade. Road transport is one of the biggest causes of poor air quality, so this will help to reduce nitrogen dioxide and nitric oxide in the air we breathe.

We also need more walking and cycling in urban areas, because it is not just the fuel that is dangerous, but tyre wear and brakes. That is why I am glad that more help is being given to local authorities so that they can plan and implement clean air zones. I know that Bath and North East Somerset Council is meant to be introducing a clean air zone in March, with Birmingham City Council doing the same in June. But in Bristol, for example, the Mayor has no control of the M32, which goes straight through the middle of the city, because it is run by Highways England. This is exactly why we need a joined-up approach across Government to solve the issue of poor air quality.

The Government should amend the Bill, and accept this cross-party amendment on air quality as it comes back in the next Session. We have done so much work to improve air quality and the environment already. I know that the Minister is passionate about this issue. Let us not go backwards. Let us go the extra mile and put ambitious air quality targets in law today.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con) [V]]

I tabled new clause 3 to draw attention to the environmental challenge and penalties facing Herefordshire. First, let me be absolutely clear: nobody wants to see more pollution or phosphates in the river—nobody. However, due to the levels of phosphate in the Wye, we have an ill thought out and ineffective housebuilding moratorium, imposed on us by a Dutch court through EU law. Implemented in October 2013, this moratorium was enacted to try to address the phosphate pollution in the Rivers Wye and Lugg. This is a serious issue that requires proper and effective action. It was hoped that Herefordshire Council, Natural England and the Environment Agency, and their Welsh equivalents, could come up with a tangible solution by which the threat could be stopped. After recent calls that I have had with these bodies, it is clear that there is still some way to go. I therefore tabled this new clause to have the subject heard in the House.

The threat of phosphates in watercourses is well known. Herefordshire is by no means alone, nor is it the worst polluted area in the country. Indeed, the river winds its way out of Powys into Herefordshire, then back into Monmouthshire where it forms the border with Gloucestershire, yet only Herefordshire has a moratorium. In the Environment Agency’s 2017 “State of the environment” report, 86% of English rivers had not reached good ecological status. High phosphate levels in the water can result in toxic algal blooms. These blooms deplete oxygen levels in the water by blocking out the light, resulting in fish and other organisms dying. The phosphates enter the watercourse through two primary means, the first being point source, where the main offender tends to be the sewage outlets—so called because it can generally be traced back to a wastewater pipe that is discharging into the river. The second means is diffuse sources, typically caused by run-off from agricultural land.

The ruling in Herefordshire occurred as a result of an EU legal case. On 7 November 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union gave its judgment in two joined cases, which were related to the habitats directive and became known as the Dutch nitrogen case, or simply the Dutch case. The case in the Netherlands found that through their fertiliser application techniques, farmers were having a negative effect on EU-protected habitats. Assessments were required to be carried out to determine how to reverse and prevent further environmental damage. As a result of this ruling in a different country, Natural England updated its legal advice, which has since created significant problems for house builders in England, particularly those in Herefordshire.

This ruling has disproportionately affected the River Wye and the River Lugg. The Wye is a special area of conservation; the Lugg is a tributary of the Wye, and is designated as a site of special scientific interest. The Wye is the fourth longest river in England, and is home to plants such as water-crowfoot and wonderful Atlantic salmon stocks. It is a wonderful river that we need to protect for the future, and the way that that is being done at the moment is ineffective. It is by no means the worst-performing river in the country when it comes to phosphate pollution, and this problem can and must be solved. We have had meetings with the council, the Environment Agency, and Natural England and its Welsh equivalents. We need collaboration, and we need to make sure that the Government will support an improvement to the phosphate levels so that we can get our river back to where it needs to be.

Environment Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Wednesday 26th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I remind Members that the speaking limit in effect for Back Benchers is four minutes. The countdown clock will be visible on the screen of hon. Members participating virtually and on the screens in the Chamber. For hon. Members participating physically in the Chamber, the usual clock in the Chamber will now operate. I call the Chair of the Select Committee, Neil Parish.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak in this debate.

I welcome the return of the Environment Bill and commend Ministers on bringing it back so quickly after the Queen’s Speech. Let me start by welcoming the recent publication of England trees action plan, which sets out ambitious targets for tree planting. I was pleased to see that it also includes plans to deliver what I have previously described as smart tree planting. What I mean by smart tree planting is not simply planting large numbers of trees, but planting the right trees in the right areas so that they can help to mitigate soil erosion and form natural flood defences. I welcome the fact that new woodlands are to be planted that will enhance biodiversity and have recreational benefits, but I emphasise that trees are also a living crop; we want to see them grow and mature, and we will use them for building our houses and will capture the carbon. I therefore want to see the right varieties planted to form the timber of our future buildings.

While we are rightly going to great lengths to deliver sustainable forestry policy in England, we must not miss the opportunity to send equally ambitious targets to protect forests overseas, many of which are very sadly facing an unprecedented threat. In 2020 alone, some 11,000 sq km of the Amazon were lost to deforestation—the most in 12 years. That is an area nearly twice the size of Devon lost in one year. Large-scale commercial agriculture accounts for a large proportion of that. We cannot allow this to go on.

[Steve Brine]

I am very happy to put my name to amendments 26 and 27, in particular amendment 27, on financial services. Many of our constituents will invest with and use UK financial institutions, banks and pension funds, and they will have very little sight of the investments that they make around the world that could assist deforestation of the Amazon. Is not the key point that we cannot just rely on transparency—that it is a duty of the House to act, and this legislation is a golden opportunity to do that?

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, especially in terms of pension funds. People do not always know which companies their pension funds are investing in and what those companies are investing in—are they investing in Malaysia or in large cattle ranches in Brazil, where deforestation may be taking place? We need to tighten up on this, and I very much welcome his intervention.

Not only are rainforests a carbon sink, but they hold 80% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity. They help to maintain our delicate global ecosystem, so I am pleased that, as part of the Bill, companies that cause illegal deforestation will be held accountable. The requirement for large companies to undertake due diligence on their supply chains is an important step, but the Bill should go further in tackling the practice.

As Members will know, I have tabled two amendments to the Bill to ensure that the measures have the teeth to tackle the problem. First, amendment 26 proposes that we put into law protections for the rights of indigenous people, requiring that

“free, prior and informed consent has been obtained from affected indigenous peoples and local communities”

before big companies go in and develop land. That is important because, while the Government’s new provisions reference the need for companies to ensure that local laws are respected, they do not consider that the rights of indigenous communities are not always respected in law.

I have visited Brazil; I have seen the trucks going through the forest and the people in the back of them with sub-machine-guns. I can assure the Government that it is not easy for indigenous people to have rights in places where there is no real rule of law in parts. Indeed, 80% of indigenous lands do not yet have secure legal rights. In those places, local people are rightly defending their own land from aggressive development, but at great risk. In February 2019, I had the honour of meeting the chief of the indigenous population in the Amazon. He told me of the daily struggles that he and his people experience in protecting their homes from illegal land clearance. Research shows that more people than ever were killed in 2019 for defending their land. Over 200 were killed—an average of around four people a week. Not only are indigenous people being killed, but many are seeing the land on which their livelihoods depend being destroyed. Amendment 26 would not only save lives but would save livelihoods—something that I know the Government care greatly about. I ask them to look carefully at this issue.

The second measure that I would like the Government to implement to tighten up the Bill is amendment 27. I firmly believe that we must ensure that the legislation includes the financial sector, which is in many cases bank-rolling deforestation in places such as Brazil and Malaysia. If we do not include the financial sector in these measures, we are missing out one of the most integral parts of the supply chain and leaving a large loophole in the law.

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[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will restrict my remarks to amendments 47 and 49, which stand in my name, and amendment 29, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney). The amendments have in common the aim of protecting the landscape and the environment both in very rural areas like mine and in urban and suburban parts of the UK that are threatened by the Government’s planning reforms.

Amendments 47 and 49 would ensure that environmental land management schemes contain a mechanism to deliver adequate financial support to our farmers for delivering landscape benefits, in particular species conservation and protected site strategies, and so rewarding our farmers for maintaining the beauty of our landscape. We have done that inadvertently through various funding schemes over the past few decades, but it is about to drop by the wayside. It is hard to put a price on landscape beauty, but it is vital that we do so.

In the lake district and the Yorkshire dales, in a normal year our Cumbria tourism economy is worth more than £3 billion and employs 60,000 people in our county—tourism is comfortably the biggest employer in Cumbria. Underpinning that economy is the beauty of the landscape.

[Neil Parish]

I agree very much with the hon. Gentleman. Farming, landscape and tourism are closely integrated. As we deal with the Environment Bill, we have to remember that agriculture and tourism are interlinked, especially in the rural parts of this great country of ours.

[Tim Farron]

The Select Committee Chair is absolutely right, and I completely agree. We have to find a mechanism to make sure that we reward those who maintain the beauty of our landscape.

I have often been in places such as Barbondale, Dentdale, Langdale, Kentmere, Longsleddale and other glorious bits of my part of the world. I almost feel compelled to express envy of the hill farmer I am with in his or her glorious environment, but often the response is a slightly sad look that says, “I can’t eat the view.” It is all very well having a beautiful place, but if those who work there make a pittance, what good is it to them? That is what is happening in the uplands, where people are steadily moving away as farms fail and close. The Government’s plan to offer early retirement to farmers offers no mechanism to get young people in to replace them, and just in the last few days, the only agricultural college in Cumbria has closed.

I am desperate to ensure that the ELMS rewards farmers for landscape value, but there is currently no effective mechanism to do that. That should be added, which is why the amendment matters. I am also concerned about what the Bill means for the status of some of the beautiful parts of the United Kingdom. UNESCO awarded world heritage site status to the lake district just a few years ago. The report that resulted in the award of that status gave as much credit to the farmers as it did to the glaciers. These are managed, crafted landscapes, and we should reward the farmers who provide them.

There are many bad things about our not being in the EU, but one good thing is that we do not need to borrow EU measures. We do not need to borrow the plan for funding ELMS through the mechanism of income forgone. We should be rewarding farmers for the value of what they do, not paying the pittance they were paid in the first place.

In the time left, I will speak to amendment 29. Local nature resource strategies are a good idea. They are welcome, but they are weak, and they will not be worth the paper they are written on if they are not material to the considerations and decisions made by local planning committees. If we are to protect our green belt, whether it be in such places as the constituency of the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda), other parts of the ring around London, or indeed a very rural area like mine, we must not put planners in a situation where they have no power to prevent developers from damaging the countryside or, as is the case in a place like mine, to prevent developers from delivering up to 50 houses without having to deliver a single affordable property.

Nine out of 10 planning permission applications get passed. More than a million planning applications for homes have not been delivered. Planning is not the problem; planning is the protection for our communities and our environment. That is why this amendment is important to try to undo and mitigate some of the Government’s attack on our rural communities.

Environment Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 20th October 2021 Commons Chamber

On Lords amendment 3, on air quality, the Government are committed to driving forward tangible and long-lasting improvements to the air we breathe. We will set ambitious air quality targets through the Bill, including a specific target on PM_2.5 which is the air pollutant that has the most significant impact on human health. Delivering ambitious reductions in PM_2.5 will require action from everyone: national Government, local government, businesses and individual citizens. The more ambitious the targets, the greater the level of intervention that will be required.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for presenting the Bill. We really do need to get to this target quickly. We also have the situation whereby the World Health Organisation is reducing the amount of PM_2.5 that can be in the atmosphere. Are the Government taking this very seriously—not only the target that we have had all along but the new target that the WHO is setting?

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend takes a huge amount of interest in this issue and I know my officials met him very recently to discuss the detail.

Environment Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I hope that the next contributions will be very brief indeed, because we can only keep the debate running until seven minutes past eight.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak about these Lords amendments.

I welcome the Government’s progress on the Office for Environmental Protection. I think that its independence is better protected than it was before, but that is something of which we must be very conscious. I believe that it will be very effective under Dame Glenys Stacey, and I think that the Secretary of State will work with her, as will Ministers, to ensure that it is indeed independent. It must have enough resources to be able to continue its work. I hope that it will prevent a great many cases from going to court. We will ultimately need a judicial system to make it work, but I hope that the new system and the new body will bring about many conclusions on environmental problems, and a good deal of advice so that cases do not end up in the courts for years.

I will be very quick, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I want to welcome the work that my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) has put into the outflows amendment, and also the work done by the Duke of Wellington. Together, they have negotiated extremely well—dare I say it—with the Government, and what the Government have now come up with is absolutely right.

[Geraint Davies]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, if we do not accept the Wellington amendment, we will all have to wear Wellington boots to avoid the stools while we are paddling. But does he agree that we also need on-roof water capture with water butts, upstream water capture, and downstream and water processing plant capture so that we can take the pressure off the sewerage system when there is flash flooding, and sort out this problem without immediate massive investment in the sewers?

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[Neil Parish]

I thank my hon. Friend—I will call him my hon. Friend—from the Select Committee. As he rightly says, we need to capture more storm water and rainwater, because it is unfortunately getting into the sewers and causing these outflows. That is an important point. The water companies have to ensure that they recompense their shareholders, but having done an enquiry in previous Parliaments, I know that we have to apply a lot of heat to those companies to ensure that they put the investment into curing the problem of outflows. We also have to ensure that the Environment Agency and Ofwat use their teeth on those companies to make that happen.

I believe that we can do this. There is a great deal of cost involved, but those companies need to concentrate a lot of their resources on these issues to ensure the quality of the water we bathe in, the rivers that we fish in and those that we want to swim in. Like the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), I also do a bit of wild swimming. I swim in the River Parrett, so I will probably end up in the Bristol channel one day. But seriously, I believe that we will clean up the water but we must put pressure on the water companies. What the Minister has said is welcome, and I know that the Secretary of State will also put pressure on them. I will stop there, because I know that many hon. Members from across the House and from Devon and Cornwall and across the west country want to speak on this issue.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I will now put on a time limit of three minutes so that we can get as many people in as possible. If people could speak for less than three minutes, that would be absolutely great.