A Green Industrial Revolution

Debate between Nigel Evans and Kerry McCarthy

Wednesday 15th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell)—that is clearly where he gets his ease of manner, and he already seems like a veteran of the Chamber. I have never visited his constituency, but perhaps it is about time I did.

I wish to pay tribute to my colleague, Sue Hayman, who represented another Cumbrian seat. I wish she were here today to contribute to this debate, because she did so much, particularly on Labour’s “Plan for Nature” and animal welfare manifesto, and as our Front-Bench speaker shadowing the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. She will be very much missed.

The planet is facing a climate and ecological crisis, but forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, if I do not have complete confidence in the Government’s ability to rise to the challenge. Since we returned after the election, two ministerial appearances at the Dispatch Box have raised my concerns. We had a statement on the Australian bushfires, and the Foreign Office Minister managed to get through her entire opening statement without putting the situation in the climate context. When a number of us challenged her and said, “Surely, if you are talking about the Australian bushfires, you should be talking about why they are happening?”, she got quite cross with me and said that we should be treating it like some sort of disaster where we just come in afterwards and patch things up, rather than looking at the root causes. As we have already heard, she repeated the 75% arson claim, which has been thoroughly debunked.

We also had an urgent question on Flybe yesterday. Again, in the Minister’s initial response, with regard to bailing out an airline and possibly cutting air passenger duty on domestic flights, there was no mention at all of the impact on carbon emissions and pollution. Surely, no matter what your views on whether Flybe provides an essential service, you have to mention climate change if you are serious about trying to reach net zero.

Another thing that really worries me is that the COP25 climate change talks took place during the election campaign. A number of us had been hoping to attend, but were obviously unable to because of the election. We have not had a ministerial statement on COP25. We should have had an oral statement, particularly as we are hosting COP26. COP25 is widely regarded as a failure—very little was achieved. I would have expected, at the very least, a written ministerial statement assessing what did not happen in Madrid and putting forward a plan for how we can get things back on track as we host COP26 in Glasgow later this year.

In terms of what is in the Queen’s Speech, I welcome the direction of travel set out in the environment Bill. I particularly welcome the decision to locate the new Office of Environmental Protection in Bristol. I can think of no better place for it, given the level of expertise we have in the city. My concern, however, is particularly that the long-term targets do not need to be set until 2022 and potentially cannot be enforced for almost two decades. Reference has already been made to the fact that the carbon budgets, which give us interim targets, are slipping. We know that we are not going to meet the recycling target for this year. We cannot just have one goal that we aim to reach two decades into the future. We have got to have a way of monitoring it and holding the Government to account in the short term as well.

The OEP will not be truly independent and will lack the power to hold the Government to account. In the previous Parliament, I sat on both the Environmental Audit Committee and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, which undertook pre-legislative scrutiny. Both Committees made that point. There is also no commitment to non-regression. When we should be seeking constant improvement, we can do better than our current standards. We certainly should not be going backwards. National infrastructure projects will not be subject to biodiversity net gain. Increasingly, net gain is looking like net parity. Again, we should be seeking improvements and not trying to just hold things as they are. The National Trust is particularly concerned that the historic environment has been excluded, even though the 25-year environment plan put it on a level playing field with the natural environment. There is no commitment to a national tree strategy, which is a crucial nature-based solution. While I am here, I would also make a plea for us to restore our peat lands. They can be an incredible carbon sink, but if we allow grouse moor owners to set fire to them, the environmental degradation that goes with that releases a huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere. We need action on that.

On a global scale, we heard the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) talk about the need to measure consumption, rather than just production. There is absolutely no way that we are looking at the true picture unless we do so. The UK, for example, consumes 3.3 million tonnes of soy per year. Some 77% of that comes from high-risk deforestation areas in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. We know that land use is one of the biggest threats to biodiversity and ecosystem services.

On UK Export Finance, it is a shame that the Secretary of State is no longer in her place. She was boasting about some of the work we do on reducing carbon emissions overseas, but, as the Environmental Audit Committee found, UK Export Finance spent £4.8 billion on fossil fuel projects overseas between 2010 and 2016. In fact, well over 90%—I think 95% or 96%—of the amount it spends on financing energy projects overseas goes on fossil fuel projects, rather than on cleaner renewable projects. That is almost equal to the total spending on international climate finance. There is no point boasting about what we do on the one hand, if we then finance the private sector to do damaging fossil fuel exploration on the other hand.

The agriculture Bill has not been mentioned yet. Last time it was before us, I spoke on Second Reading and served on the Bill Committee, which concluded in December 2018. There is a sense of déjà vu to hear it announced again. I think it was published a couple of hours ago and there have been only a couple of minor tweaks to the previous Bill. That is disappointing. It is disappointing that the Government did not use this opportunity to think again about how farming can tackle the climate, nature and health crises all together. Those three dots simply have not been joined up. From my perspective, it requires a transition to sustainable agroecological farming by 2030, as proposed by the RSA’s Food, Farming and Countryside Commission. I hope, in the new Parliament, to reconstitute the all-party group on agroecology, which I chaired for a number of years, and I will be tabling the same amendments in support of whole-farm systems that I tabled in the previous Parliament.

I would also like the Government to adopt the previously proposed new clause on supporting county farms. We have heard a lot of warm words on this. In a session I chaired at the Oxford Real Farming conference, the former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), made clear his commitment to county farms, which are a great way for new entrants who cannot afford to buy land at today’s prices to enter the market. They are also a good way to direct the growing of local healthy food and restoring nature. I hope we can pin the Government down on that.

We need a long-term financial commitment, which farmers have been asking for, on delivering public goods to be set out in the Bill. The Government have now ring-fenced the overall farm funding budget for the next five years, but there is still no indication as to how it will be divided up. Based on independent analysis by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the National Trust and the Wildlife Trust, at least £2.9 billion is needed for the new environment land management schemes. The Bill is also missing a duty on the Government to routinely assess the scale of financial need and a strong baseline of regulations for land managers to adhere to.

I tabled new clause 1 in the Report stage of the Bill, which then suddenly disappeared in December 2018. I think one of the reasons it disappeared was that the Government were convinced they would lose on new clause 1. New clause 1 was designed to ensure that there would be no lowering of environmental, food safety and animal welfare standards in any future trade deals. The Government talk about that a lot, but when I raised it at Brexit questions last week, mentioning the National Farmers Union’s concerns and its request for a trading standards commission to be established, the Minister was incredibly dismissive. We know that the Government will come under significant pressure from the Department for International Trade to lower standards in any future trade deal once we leave the EU, and that will lead to a race to the bottom. As I said, it is not just environmentalists but the NFU and everyone involved in the food sector in this country who do not want to see that.

Finally, if I can just ask where we are in terms of some of the animal welfare proposals. There is a lot of support for the sentencing Bill, which will increase the sentences for animal cruelty from six months to five years. I hope that will be brought back soon. Where has the sentience Bill got to? Again, the Government promised several years ago, I think in 2017, to introduce a sentience Bill. They still have not done so. I urge the Government to bring it forward as soon as possible.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We now come to another maiden speech—Mr Gary Sambrook.

Modern Farming and the Environment

Debate between Nigel Evans and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Nigel Evans (in the Chair)]

Before I call Kerry McCarthy again, I remind Members that I have said that speakers should take about five minutes each, and your speech has now lasted for eight minutes.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Sorry—I did not quite get that. And, yes, soil is absolutely brilliant for carbon sequestration.

I will just conclude, Mr Evans; I apologise, as I did not know that you had said Members should take five minutes. The signs that are being sent out by the Government at the moment are that they are trying to head in the right direction with the Agriculture Bill, but the need to act swiftly is imperative, and I would like to see more ambition.

Immigration Rules: Sponsors

Debate between Nigel Evans and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 14th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady, but this is supposed to be an intervention, not a speech.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Perhaps when I have spoken for a little longer, my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) will be able to intervene again and make her second point. Indeed, if she intervenes several more times, she may eventually be able to tell the whole story.

I understand that those who earn less than £18,600 can top it up if they have savings, up to a maximum of £62,000. A constituent who was in that situation came to see me the other day. Perhaps the Minister will be able to clarify the position when he responds, but I think that people have to show that they have had the money in their accounts for six months and it has not just been lent to them.

The final case to which I want to refer is that of a constituent whose girlfriend is based in Hong Kong, but is of Philippine origin. He wants her to join him in the United Kingdom, but they cannot marry. She was married to an abusive husband in the Philippines—she fled to Hong Kong to get away from him—but divorce is illegal in the Philippines, which in itself raises interesting questions. What happens if someone from the Philippines comes to this country and wants to marry a British citizen? What will be the impact on that person’s immigration status if that is not allowed?

The couple cannot live in the Philippines together, which is an option that they explored. If my constituent were in a relationship with an undivorced woman in the Philippines, he could face seven years in jail and she could face three to four years.

It turned out, after we had looked into it, that my constituent’s income is just enough for him to qualify under the rules. He came to see me because he had heard about the £62,000 savings limit, and thought that he was expected to have that much money in the bank on top of his income. However, if he had earned just £100 a month less, he would not have been able to bring his partner to the United Kingdom either. They were exploring the possible options. His partner was considering going to Canada, and he thought that perhaps he would be able to join her there.

The situation is ridiculous. My constituent has family responsibilities, and is settled in employment in the UK. The fact that he would have been forced to go to the other side of the world to be with his partner when she could join him here seems nonsensical to me.

Sovereign Grant Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 14th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 6, page 6, line 7, leave out ‘7 years’ and insert ‘3 years’.

Government manuscript amendment B.

Amendment 7, page 6, line 8, leave out ‘7 years’ and insert ‘5 years’.

Amendment 8, page 6, line 8, at end add—

‘(6) The Trustees shall also review the percentage for the time being specified in Step 1 of section 6(1) as soon as practicable if, over the financial year immediately preceding the base year, the income account net surplus of the Crown Estate increased by more than the trend rate of GDP growth.

(7) In subsection (6), “the trend rate of GDP growth” means the estimate of the trend rate of GDP growth most recently published by the Office for Budget Responsibility which is applicable to that year.

(8) Subsections (2) to (4) shall also apply to a review carried out under subsection (6).’.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I wish to speak briefly to amendment 8. This would introduce a check on potential future rises in income from the Crown Estate. At a time when Departments and the public generally are having to take very difficult decisions to make their limited budgets cover the essentials, we should at least apply careful analysis to what sort of income the 15% figure would bring in for the royal household over future years. I would appreciate any information Ministers have on forecasts for the sovereign grant over the coming years, particularly regarding this spending review period.

We are very short of time, but I shall press on with the issue of meeting the royal household’s needs. When I met the Economic Secretary yesterday—I was pleased to have the opportunity to discuss these issues with her and the Bill team—we had a discussion about the fact that the civil list has not adequately reflected the needs of the royal family in the past. At one point, it was being paid too much money and amassed significant reserves; then, it was not paid enough to meet its needs and had to draw down on the reserves. I appreciate that the current formula may not be appropriate, but a formula fixed to income on the basis of something like the Crown Estate is not necessarily any more likely to meet royal spending needs.

In 2010-11, the Crown Estate profits were £230.9 million. If the new mechanism were already in use, that would mean a grant in two years’ time of £34.7 million. Instead, the 2012-13 grant has been set at £31 million in recognition that 15% would not be appropriate or proportionate. This is why we are asking the Government to consider a more flexible mechanism in future.

When the Chancellor spoke in the preliminary debate the other week, he said that the grant to the royal family should reflect generally how well the economy is doing. The particular concern we have—it has been touched on already—is that the Crown Estate includes investment in offshore wind, particularly the new wind-power projects that are coming on board. I think the chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association said that the carbon capture and storage industry is likely to be very big in the future, probably measured in trillions of dollars. We think that could have an impact on the accounts, too.

We were grateful for the Chancellor’s assurances during the debate on the funding resolution that we will not allow revenues from offshore wind to lead to a disproportionate rise in revenues for the royal household. I would be grateful for any further information about what safeguards could be put in place.

Amendment 8 would help. It would limit disproportionate increases to the royal household. I welcome the fact that the Government have tabled manuscript amendments in response to our amendments which would provide an earlier review period. As the Bill was originally drafted, the first review of the new arrangement would not have taken place for seven years and there would then have been a review every seven years after that. We thought that the first review should take place within three years and that subsequent reviews should take place every five years. We have listened to what the Government had to say about three years being unfortunate in that it would coincide with the next general election. We are happy to accept the Government manuscript amendments that the first review should be four years and subsequent reviews every five years. We do think, however, that there should be another mechanism to address the fact that no cap is in force. There is a cap on the reserves, but there is no cap on the potential increases that the 15% figure, linked to the income of the Crown Estate, could generate.

I shall skim over much of what else I was going to say, but we think it important to have some upward cap. I shall be interested to hear what the Minister or the Chancellor have to say in response.