Exiting the European Union (Environmental Protection)

Debate between Neil Parish and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my right hon. Friend very much for his kind words and his intervention. He is absolutely right. We need a hugely ambitious tree planting programme for this country. We do have an ambitious tree planting programme, but my view is that we need to step it up even further. We are certainly planning to do so and there will be, I can tell him tantalisingly, some announcements soon to that effect. It is not just about planting trees; it is also about ecosystems and encouraging wildlife in all its forms. As he knows, one of the advantages of leaving the European Union is that we can change the common agricultural policy to a system that, instead of paying people simply for owning land—effectively, simply for being wealthy—we will be paying them subsidies in return for providing public goods like improving biodiversity, flood prevention and so on. This is one of the great Brexit bonuses that I am looking forward to.

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

I welcome my hon. Friend to his new position. Further to his answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), we now have an opportunity, with a new agricultural policy, to plant the right kind of trees. We need the right advice to plant trees in the right place so they do not get diseases and are not destroyed later. We have a real opportunity to make practical changes, moving on from the common agricultural policy, that work in different parts of the country. Different trees may need to be planted in different climatic conditions.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and all the work he has done on these and associated issues. I could not agree with him more. I look forward to the publication of our tree strategy in a couple of months. From what I have seen so far, it will address those concerns head-on.

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Environmental Audit Committee, Health and Social Care Committee and Transport Committee

Debate between Neil Parish and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish]

I thank the hon. Lady for a great question and for her co-operation and work through the Joint Committee. She is absolutely right about reinforcing the fact that the issue is cross-departmental, because DEFRA is in the dock every time there is a court case, yet much of the solution is in transport and local government as we go about our daily lives. I went to Waterloo the other day to see the electric buses there. If we can get more electric buses across the whole country, that will really help.

With regard to the types of vehicle that we will use and their availability—the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) also raised this—we have to be absolutely certain that we know what vehicles we are buying and that they are properly labelled. Hydrogen vehicles might also be a solution in some places. We have to look at all these things and improve public transport across the piece. We also need to consider the way we run our lives. When we go shopping, for example, ideally we should go to the shops on the bus or on our bicycle, or sometimes shop online, and then all of it would be delivered by vans that were either hybrid or electric, not diesel. There are lots of things we can do not only across Government, but in the way we run our lives. I thank the Chair of the Transport Committee for her contributions.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Stringer, for allowing me to raise one point. This is a very strong report. In particular, it calls for a new clean air Act. I ask the Government to acknowledge that the report, with its strong recommendations, is based on a consensus between four Select Committees. I hope that they will take heed. Will my hon. Friend, who has made a brilliant introduction, join me in celebrating the appearance this very morning of a 100% electric, fully British-made black cab right here in New Palace Yard, of the sort that we will see flooding our streets in the years to come?

Animal Welfare

Debate between Neil Parish and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Tuesday 12th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Zac Goldsmith]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend and I thank him for making that point.

The Secretary of State has said:

“As we leave the European Union there are opportunities for us to go further and to improve… animal welfare”.

Of course, he is right. For example—this goes to the point my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) was making—as we leave the EU, we will be able to end the live export of animals for slaughter and fattening, which is a grim process for tens of thousands of animals every year. Last year, 3,000 calves were transported from Scotland via Ireland to Spain and over 45,000 sheep were taken from the UK through continental Europe. Under EU single market rules, the UK has not been able to stop that—we have tried, but we have not succeeded. I am thrilled that Ministers have indicated that they are minded to act as soon as we are allowed. If we do, we will be the first European country to do so and will be setting what I hope will become a trend.

Procurement is another area where we can make a relatively easy and significant impact. The Government spend around £2 billion a year on food for schools, hospitals, prisons and military barracks. Currently, that food is required to meet only a very basic standard of animal welfare—basic standards that still leave chickens in tiny cages, pigs in cramped and stressful conditions, cows in sheds all year long and so on.

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. The five-year sentencing for animal cruelty is excellent. We need to procure food that is of a very high standard and British. We also need to ensure that, as we do our Brexit deals in future, we do not allow in food with much lower welfare standards, so that our farmers who have high-quality and high-welfare standards also have a real chance to maintain a competitive edge.

[Zac Goldsmith]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. I am reassured by a number of statements that have been made by the Secretary of State in relation to that. Putting sentience into UK law across the entire range of Government policies will also help us ensure that we do not lower our standards in return for trade deals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Zac Goldsmith]

That is exactly right. That has been a barrier all the way along from the Government’s point of view. However, they can now begin to take that best practice and make it the norm. I would like to see them commit to using their vast buying power to boost the most sustainable and highest animal welfare standards. When I first raised this point in Parliament as a new MP seven years or so ago, I was told all the time by Ministers: “You cannot do it. It will be too expensive. It is a luxury.” I helped to set up a group called School Food Matters, originally in Richmond, to try it out in my own area. We persuaded Richmond Council and then Kingston Council to rewrite their contracts. Today, every single primary school in Richmond serves Food for Life gold standard food—the very best people can get. They prepare all their food in house and take-up by parents has trebled, and we are doing nearly as well in Kingston, where it started slightly later. Here is the thing: the cost per meal went down by 38p—it did not go up; it went down. In my view, that removes the only argument against pursuing this policy.

There is no reason not to use that simple but powerful lever to support the highest standards, but the Government can do more than that: they can raise the standards as well. There are two important ways in which the Government should do so. The first, simply, is to update the rules around cages. Millions of animals are currently trapped in appalling conditions on our farms. Pregnant sows are stuffed, unable to move, into farrowing crates, typically from a week before giving birth until the piglets are weaned. Those have been banned in Sweden and Norway, and we should do the same. Chickens are no luckier. We banned battery cages in 2012, but the so-called enriched cages that replaced them are more or less the same. They are hideously restrictive, and there is virtually no additional room at all. The life of a factory chicken just does not bear thinking about. Luxembourg and Germany have banned the cages, so why cannot we?

The second way in which we can easily raise standards is by tackling the overuse and abuse of antibiotics on farms. This is an animal welfare issue because antibiotics have been used in farming to keep animals alive in conditions where they would otherwise die, but it is also a major human health issue. The abuse of antibiotics has allowed the growth of resistant bacteria, which can spread to the human population and reduce medicines’ effectiveness in treating our own infections. The brilliant chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies has warned:

“If we don’t take action, deaths will go up and up and modern medicine as we know it will be lost.”

It is worth thinking about that pretty profound statement from the chief medical officer. She has talked about a “catastrophic threat”: the risk of millions of people dying each year from common infections.

The good news is that, after a lot of campaigning, the issue has risen up the political agenda and the Government have taken action. Sales of antibiotics to treat animals in the UK fell by 27% from 2014 to 2016. That is clearly good news, but the threat remains acute and the Government need to get a stronger grip. There should be absolutely no mass medication of animals simply to prevent illness. It should be outlawed. There should be no use of antibiotics, such as Colistin, that are classified as critically important to human health. They should have no place on a farm. If we stop this madness, we stand a chance of preventing a human health disaster and, as it happens, we will also force a kinder, more civilised form of farming.

Finally, on agriculture, an issue that merits, and has indeed had, many debates all of its own is the badger cull. The Government have always said that their policy of culling badgers to stop the spread of bovine TB is based on science, but that position is becoming harder to justify. The only full Government study into bovine TB transmission between cattle and badgers, which ran from 1998 to 2006, concluded that

“badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in Britain.”

More recently, the independent expert panel appointed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to advise on the current pilot cull stated that it was ineffective and inhumane. Nobody doubts the importance of dealing with TB or the devastating impact that it can have on livelihoods—

[Neil Parish]

I could not disagree with my hon. Friend more on this particular point. If there is a pool of the disease bovine TB within badgers, and someone tests their herds of cattle, ensures they are clean and then puts them out in fields where there are badgers carrying bovine TB, the badgers will then re-infect the cattle. We have to deal with both. I am sorry, but on this occasion I could not disagree with him more.

[Zac Goldsmith]

Well, we normally agree, and I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I do not believe that there is anything like enough evidence to justify culling tens of thousands of native wild animals, the vast majority of which are disease-free. This year is likely to see a trebling in the number of badgers culled, and yet in Wales, where no general culls are taking place, TB has halved. In the absence of robust science, the very least the Government should—

[Zac Goldsmith]

I am going to move on, but the chief veterinary officer in Wales takes a different view.

[Neil Parish]

She is in favour of culling.

[Zac Goldsmith]

She wants selective, as opposed to general, preventive culls, and that is different to our approach here in England.

[Neil Parish]

Ours is selective.

[Zac Goldsmith]

Our approach is not selective. There are huge numbers of animals involved, The approach in England is a preventive cull, as opposed to a selective cull. My view is that at the very least the Government should suspend the cull and commission a proper study into the alternatives, so that we can be sure that the policy we adopt is based on science, and not assumption.

I shall hold off on taking interventions for a few moments, as in the time I have remaining I want to briefly look at how we treat exotic wild animals. In so many areas we are world leaders, but in others we lag behind. For example, at least 23 countries worldwide have banned the use of wild animals in circuses; but despite British Government promises going back five years, it is still legal to use lions, tigers, zebras and other wild animals in travelling circuses in the UK. It is time for Ministers to make good on a promise that has been made and repeated over the past five years.

The keeping of monkeys as pets is a similar issue. Primates are highly intelligent wild animals; they are not suitable pets. Like us, they enjoy complex social lives and form deep and lasting relationships, but despite that thousands upon thousands of squirrel monkeys, capuchins and marmosets languish alone in cages across the country. Because they become very tricky as they grow old, they are often simply abandoned and then have to be picked up by wonderful, but overstretched, organisations such as Monkey World in Dorset. The emotional and physical damage that they endure takes years and years to undo. Fifteen European countries have banned the trade, and more than 100,000 British people signed a petition demanding that we do the same. Again, we need to get a grip on this issue.

It is not just individual private ownership that needs looking at. There are 250 licensed zoos in the UK. Some, such as Howletts in Kent, really do represent the gold standard. The welfare of the animals is their principal concern, and the conservation of the species that they harbour is at the forefront of their campaign. They release animals back into the wild in a way that no other zoo in the country does. However, recent incidents, such as the exposé of the grotesque conditions at South Lakes Safari Zoo, show that there is a gulf between best and worst practice, and a need for better standards and a more rigorous inspection process. I believe that we need to establish a new, independent zoo inspectorate and give it the job of drawing up fresh standards for animal welfare in UK zoos and then enforcing them.

I want to join in the applause that the Government rightly earned last month when the Secretary of State announced that we would ban the trade in ivory here in the UK. Globally, the trade takes the lives of 20,000 elephants a year—one every 26 minutes—and they are hurtling towards extinction. We in this country—I do not think that many people are aware of this—are the largest exporter of legal ivory in the world, stimulating demand for ivory and giving the traffickers a means to launder new ivory as if it were old.

The Government’s promise is not merely symbolic—it is much more than that—but I hope they will go further. Evidence is mounting of an increase in the trade in hippo ivory. There are only 100,000 or so hippos in the world, so the slightest shift in demand could be devastating for that species. I hope that the Government will expand their consultation, or the policy when it eventually emerges, to include other ivory-bearing species such as hippos, the walrus and the narwhal.

Finally on the international dimension, hon. Members will remember the outrage that followed the killing of Cecil the lion in 2015 and, too, the announcement a few weeks ago that the United States President was thinking of reversing the decision of his predecessor to ban the import of elephant and lion parts from trophy hunting. At the time it went largely unreported that this country also allows the import of wild animal trophies, including from species threatened with extinction. We need to change that. It should simply be illegal to import body parts of any animal listed as endangered by the convention on international trade in endangered species

The last point that I want to make moves into a different field. It relates not to farmed or exotic animals, or to our role overseas; it relates to puppies.

New Housing Design

Debate between Neil Parish and Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish]

I have not had enough direct experience of what the hon. Gentleman is talking about in Scotland, so I do not intend to answer his question. As far as I am concerned, Ruth Davidson does a very good job—but he would expect me to say that, would he not? She is right; good-quality design will boost support for development and then encourage further growth. I would like to give a special mention to the social enterprise Create Streets. It has done fantastic work in the past three years to encourage the development of quality town and city homes. Its focus is on terraced streets of housing and apartments, rather than complex multi-storey buildings. We know that these designs are popular with the public.

So how do we achieve this? The key is strong community engagement. The tools are already there in the form of neighbourhood plans and design codes, but we need to ensure that neighbourhood plans are not then overruled by local district councils and others who decide that they still know best. I want to ensure that local people get a real input into the design. A design code is a set of drawn design rules that instruct and advise on the physical development of an area. Used well, they create certainty about what should be built, but they are not enough used. Local people should be given the encouragement and resources to create neighbourhood plans with their own design codes, and then, like I said, to actually put the plan in place. They could then plan the sort of development they want in their local area. This would have two main benefits: it would improve the quality of our housing stock and give local communities a stake and a sense of civic pride in the new development. They would be buying into the new development, and we need that to happen more.

Shelter recently published a report, “New Civic Housebuilding: A better way to build the homes we need”, with practical solutions for building high-quality, popular and affordable homes. It recommended a strong master planning process so that local groups, landowners and residents could influence the design of new housing in the area, which in turn will build public support.

The Royal Institute of British Architects has also recommended that every neighbourhood forum or parish council should have the funding to develop a design code for their area. This is a good idea. The village of Membury in my constituency has drawn up its own local plan; the problem is that the local district council is trying to overrule it. That is where the Government’s ideas are right. We must make sure that Membury can get its way because it had a local referendum and has done all the right things, but its plan is still being scuppered by the local district council. Imagine how this idea could stimulate interest in local design of housing and really boost support for new housing in towns and cities in England and across the country.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Does he agree that if we want local people to engage properly in the manner he is describing, which is absolutely right, it is critical that their decisions, guidance and local plans are not overruled by remoter bodies over which they have very little control?

[Neil Parish]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. A developer may put an exciting design on the table but then, further along the line, may decide that due to economic or other circumstance they cannot build to that specification; or they may suddenly drop a water park that was in the specification. That is when people become cynical, which is why, when things are put forward and local people have an input, we need to build what they decided on, not something that is foisted upon them.

Developers need certainty about the standards they must hit instead of the current race to the bottom. Local people must have confidence that developers will build to their plans. A new town, Sherford, is being built in Devon, and in Cullompton a proposed garden village will have a water park and a lot of green open space. What I have seen so far is very exciting, but I want to make sure that the developers do what they say they will do, because it is a great example of how design should be done with a design code and proper consultation. However, the developers have now applied to change the town code to mere guidelines. That would be a retrograde step and must not be allowed to happen around the UK.

When communities come together to influence local housing design, they must know that the plans will be implemented. The local authority should amend them only in exceptional circumstances, not because they do not suit its plans for the future. Designs should not be railroaded by big house builders chasing extra profit and deciding that the economics have changed. I have a clear question for the Minister: how are the Government working to meet their manifesto commitment to support high-quality, high-density housing like mansion blocks, mews houses and terraced streets? How are they helping communities to shape design of houses in their local area?

The second part of my speech calls for a new homes ombudsman. The concept is simple: a new ombudsman focusing on complaints about new build homes. I suspect that no Member in the Chamber has not received complaints from constituents about new build. An ombudsman would give new homebuyers redress for any dispute with house builders or warranty providers. I am sure that every Member here today could reel off examples from their own constituency.

In Axminster and particularly Cullompton, in my constituency, there has been a problem with new homes. I name Barratt Homes and its offshoot, David Wilson Homes, not because there have been problems with their houses, but because they have not redressed those problems. They have been reticent to be contacted and difficult to get hold of. They take ages to make repairs, such as to roofs that are not sealed properly, and to wet rendering that is supposed to be damp proof, but is not. There have been all sorts of problems that they do not sort out quickly enough. That is where the new homes ombudsman could have a good effect.