Rural Communities in Cumbria: Levelling Up

Debate between Nigel Evans and Neil Parish

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

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

As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, Devon has much in common with Cumbria when we look at the topography and the need to get rural broadband. It is great that my hon. Friend is standing up for Cumbria, but if there is one thing we need to fix across the country, it is rural broadband and broadband generally, because of everything else follows that. The pandemic has shown how much we need it and how much more we can do. Sometimes, broadband stops the need for physical movement, too. I very much support my hon. Friend’s great drive for rural Cumbria, but may I make a plea for rural Devon, too?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Cheeky.

Environment Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Neil Parish

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.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Neil Parish

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 12th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his point of order. As he is an experienced Member of the House, he knows that when Mr Speaker and the Public Bill Office look at these amendments, they do so very thoroughly. Although they do not have to give a reason why an amendment is allowed or not allowed, the statement that I have just made is quite rare in the 28 years that I have been a Member—and I think Mr Speaker has done rather well, to be honest.

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

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is not really Mr Speaker I wish to challenge. I just want to say that it was not beyond the wit of Ministers to table a money resolution so that we could have dealt with amendment 18. This has put Mr Speaker in a very difficult position.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I am sure that I speak on behalf of Mr Speaker when I say how grateful he is for the hon. Gentleman’s point of order and the way in which he has made it. Those on the Treasury Bench have heard his point.

Clause 4

Multi-annual financial assistance plans

Future Flood Prevention

Debate between Nigel Evans and Neil Parish

Monday 27th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. If we are going to allow water to go out on to land in order to save a town or a village from flooding, the landowner first needs to know about it and, secondly, needs to be able to manage it properly, and it has to be done by agreement. Sometimes, naturally, these things are done in exceptional circumstances, but, once done, there needs to be a plan if that needs to be done again in the future. Agricultural land can be very useful for storing water, but we must remember that it is also used for growing crops and keeping stock, and therefore we have to be sure that the farmer can farm that land, as well as manage it for water. That is why we need to deal with this by agreement.

[Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend knows, we had severe flooding in the Ribble valley and throughout Lancashire in 2015. He mentions agricultural land: on Friday, along with the Woodland Trust and the Ribble Rivers Trust, I planted some trees along one of the river banks. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to look again at the number of trees being planted, and the usefulness of planting trees in stopping soil erosion and, indeed, holding a lot of the water that otherwise would go to the ground?

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, because it is not just about planting the trees; it is also about where we plant them. If we plant them along the edges of the fields or the banks of the streams and rivers, we can hold back the water and hold back the soil. Very often, the soil and debris being washed from the field is also contributing to the flood. So this is not just about the number of trees; it is about making sure we are smart in where we plant them. The way we plant them is important, too. We visited the north of England, and when the old Forestry Commission was planting trees it turned the soil up and put it up into a furrow and planted the trees on the top of it. The only trouble is that there are then two gullies either side of it, which then allow the water to run down very quickly if the trees are planted on a slope. Therefore, over the years there are many things we can do, but my hon. Friend makes a very good point that this is about planting trees, holding that soil back and holding the water back long enough for the major flood to go through, and that was what much of the work was done on.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend will also be very aware that many fields only have so much topsoil on them, and it is the topsoil that is fertile and that we grow our crop in. Therefore, if farmers lose much of their topsoil to the streams and rivers, they have lost a lot of the very fertile soil in their fields. I think most farmers, when presented with a plan that can save their topsoil and the way they manage their fields, can see a big advantage in this, but we have to work with the farming community, rather than, as perhaps has sometimes been the case, just imposing our will upon them. If we can persuade them that there are many good reasons for managing soils in a slightly different way, we can perhaps get a lot further with that. We can sometimes use carrots, and not necessarily sticks. I am sure our Minister has many carrots to offer today, and we will be interested to hear about that when she sums up the debate.

We also need to take a closer look at development in built-up areas affected by flood risk. Naturally, we have laws that we hope will restrict most building on floodplains —sometimes it is breached, but on the whole it is not. When an area is flooded, very little of the water has actually landed on the flooded area. It usually comes from higher up. Rather than stopping building in flood-risk areas, we need to think when building developments of several hundred or 1,000 houses about capturing the run-off water from everywhere on those estates, including the roads. It could be captured in ponds or in reservoirs or tanks underneath some of the homes. Building in resilience measures to ensure that the water from a development could be held would make the situation better rather than worse. We can build developments, but we do not always give enough consideration to what is going to happen further downstream.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

A lot of house building is going on in Whalley in my constituency, and one of the conditions was that tanks should be put in before the houses were built. Sadly, the houses seem to be being built and occupied before the tanks have been put in. Does my hon. Friend agree that developers need to take planning conditions seriously and abide by the rules and regulations set down by the local authorities, because of the misery that flooding can cause if they do not get these things right?

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes another good point. Planning conditions can be flouted, and they are sometimes not properly enforced. It is sometimes claimed that resilience measures cannot be put in place because of the economic situation, but we must ensure that houses are not built unless those measures are taken. I am sure that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minister present will pass on that point to her colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government, because this is a planning matter. If we are going to plan for the developments that we need, we must plan them properly. I do not think that any of us are against development, but we must have the right kind of development and hold the water back. Indeed, if we could make a feature of those measures, we might also create some leisure facilities as well. That would be a planning gain.

The recommendations in our report also include the need for a new governance model to deal with flooding. As part of our inquiry, the EFRA Committee visited the Netherlands to learn how that low-lying country manages flooding. We learned that 25% of the land there is below sea level, and that half of its 17 million population live in flood-prone areas, so they know a lot about flooding. The threat of flooding led to local government and water management being administered hand in hand from as early as the 13th century. As the threat of flooding in the UK grows, we need to borrow some ideas from the Dutch and to mirror their focus on dealing with floods locally and nationally. The fens in this country were drained by Dutch engineers, as was the part of Somerset where I still have my farm. They know exactly how to deal with water, because if they did not deal with it, they would not have a country. It is as simple as that.

Ash Dieback Disease

Debate between Nigel Evans and Neil Parish

Monday 12th November 2012 Commons Chamber

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

It is very sad that the House of Commons cannot come together today to tackle this disease. The Opposition’s attempt to land a blow on the Government in this regard is absolute nonsense. There is no doubt that, as the relevant map shows, a lot of the disease comes across from the continent. No Government, irrespective of their political persuasion, can stop what blows on the wind. Therefore, we must concentrate on how we are going to deal with this disease. We must look for ash trees that will be immune in future, so that we can take the seeds from them and grow them. As the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) said, we do not want to see the decimation that we experienced with Dutch elm disease. Indeed, I saw that on my own farm: the decimation of massive trees that were hundreds of years old. We have never really recovered from that: every time a tree grows, it catches the disease again perhaps 10 or 15 years later. We want to ensure that the ash tree is there for the future.

We must also be certain that the single market, the great wonder of the European Union, is not abused. The trouble is that no Government can stop the import of ash trees until they have proved that they have the disease, and by that time it is too late. That really has to be put right. We are surrounded by water—let us hope that not every disease can be blown across the channel—and Britain could develop the same methods that Australia and New Zealand have developed in trying to keep disease out of the country. We must ensure that we breed ash trees in this country—that we do not export the seed to Holland, where the trees are then grown, and then import the trees back again. The industry itself must take some responsibility here. When the disease is on the continent, it is absolute nonsense to keep this trade going backwards and forwards. Given the existence of the single market, it is very difficult to stop it, but we need to change things.

I want Britain to have beautiful trees into the future. As Members have pointed out, there are many diseases out there that we need to tackle, so let us adopt a positive approach. I praise what Ministers and the Secretary of State are doing to analyse where all the diseased trees are located, so that we can act quickly. We cannot simply stop the disease by chopping down all the ash trees that have it—the saplings, yes; but the mature trees, we cannot. Let us hope that some of those trees survive and that from those, we can grow the great ash trees that we want to see.

The lesson in all this is that we cannot keep exporting and importing trees, bringing disease with them. I look forward to a positive message from Ministers on research and maintaining “fortress Britain” so far as growing trees and keeping out disease is concerned, and then perhaps repopulating trees across Europe. I repeat my first point: I am very sad that the Opposition have made such a thing of this. I respect what the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) did while he was Secretary of State; he has taken a much more responsible attitude.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

To resume his seat no later than 6.40, Dr Julian Lewis.

Food Prices and Food Poverty

Debate between Nigel Evans and Neil Parish

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

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

It gives me great pleasure to speak in this debate, as there is no doubt about the conclusion that we should make—that there is a link between food prices and food poverty. It is apparent that the poorest in society will find high prices difficult, and we only have to look throughout the world to find that. As the population of the world reaches 7 billion, and moves towards 8 billion by 2030, we have a greater need to produce more food, and that is where I charge the previous Government, because for much of their final period in office they did not encourage food production. In fact they said, “We can import as much food as we like”; our home production did not matter.

We therefore need greatly to increase our food production in this country, and as other Members have said, we need to use biotechnology in order to do so and to reduce our use of fertilisers and pesticides. A blight-resistant potato is coming, and it could increase food production while dramatically reducing the environmental consequences of spraying potatoes, so there is much we can do, but we have to go forward and do it.

On the grocery code adjudicator, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who is no longer in his place, missed the point. If these wonderful supermarkets are not doing anything wrong, they have nothing to fear from the adjudicator. The point of setting up the post of adjudicator is to put him or her in place so that, if there is abuse, it can be looked at. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wants the role of the adjudicator introduced quickly, so we need to give the legislation parliamentary time. Farmers, growers and many other people in the food chain are often squeezed not only by the big supermarkets but by the big buyers in the chains, and that is why the adjudicator is so necessary.

I therefore very much welcome the debate and what the Government are doing to increase food production and ensure that common agricultural policy reform does not set aside more land and stop food production. There is a moral obligation to produce food not only for this country, but for the rest of the world.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Thank you for your time constraint.

Fisheries

Debate between Nigel Evans and Neil Parish

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

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

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

The hon. Gentleman will have to finish his speech at half-past 5.