Environment and Climate Change

Oliver Letwin Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

I want to make three very brief points, which I hope will not repeat anything that has been said so far. The first relates to the tone and nature of the debate. It is enormously to be welcomed that there is once again consensus across the House of Commons in favour of taking this issue very seriously.

I recall the time I first went to see, in his then role as Environment Secretary, the brother of the former leader of the Labour party. I put it to the then Environment Secretary that the Conservative party, whose policy review I was running, was prepared to move forward on a climate change Bill, and he said to me, rather memorably, that he could not see any way to prevent consensus from breaking out. It did so, and that climate change Act has protected the whole political class from a great tendency for one party to score points off the other in relation to potentially unpopular measures. As long as we can maintain that consensus, I agree with the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband)—the former Leader of the Labour party and former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change—that we may disagree from time to time about the means by which we achieve things, but we can still move forward satisfactorily.

The second point I want to make relates to the comments made by the right hon. Gentleman and by the other former Energy Secretary who has spoken, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey). System change in the UK is required, and only through system change can mass effects be achieved. We should not expect people to take this on themselves individually as a moral crusade. Some noble souls will, but the aggregate effect will be slight compared with that of system change.

System change must work with the grain of human nature. That means, for example, that in electrifying the car fleet, which is by far the greatest current shift that we can achieve, we need to solve range anxiety. The reason that people—even those who can afford to do so, and for whom such cars represent a net saving—do not buy electric cars is that they are worried about the duration for which they will be able to travel. If we ask ourselves the crucial question, “Are you willing to have a car that might not get you home from the constituency?” the answer will always be no.

There is a ready solution; Next Green Car is already setting out plans for recharging stations every 50 miles on our trunk roads, so that no one will ever be more than 50 miles from a recharging station. We are putting a huge amount of effort, as are the car manufacturers, into improving battery storage. We can solve the problem. Sustained governmental effort is required over the succeeding 18 months or so to put us in a position where we can rival Norway, and then we will start to create a virtuous circle.

As soon as those who can already afford to do so start buying electric cars in sufficient quantities, the price will fall naturally. People who are currently less able to afford such cars will then be able to do so, after which prices will fall yet further. We will thus create exactly the sort of extraordinary revolution that we have seen in information technology with the smartphone, of which there were almost none in the world 25 years ago but of which there are now literally billions, including in many impoverished countries.

That brings me to my last point, which is about the item that has not been discussed terribly much this afternoon but will obviously need an awful lot of discussion over the next few years. There are roughly 2.6 billion people living in India and China, and they are living in circumstances that make climate change particularly significant for them. This is about not just the air pollution issues that dominate in Chinese cities, but the extreme tensions relating to the use of water, for example, in the border lands between China and India. The regimes in both countries are very conscious of affairs. They are also conscious of the need to lift up those 2.6 billion people—in the case of China, to lift people out of middle-income status and into being rich, or what they call moderately prosperous, and in the case of India, to lift literally hundreds of millions of people who are still in abject poverty up to the condition of middle income, along with advancing the interests of those who already enjoy middle incomes. That will require a huge amount of additional activity and energy.

There is no way that anybody preaching from this House or anywhere else in the world is going to tell those countries that they do not have a right to lift their populations into that kind of prosperity. We in the west therefore have a solemn duty to spend our time trying to work out how we can make it easier and cheaper for those countries to achieve that goal, and to work with them to do it. That will require a substantial realignment of not only climate change policy, but our entire western foreign policy, which is of course too large a subject for me to dilate on now. Nevertheless, I hope that if we are to take this issue forward, we can do so with the seriousness that is required in our Foreign Office, and across the western world’s diplomatic establishments, and not just in Departments that are concerned with our domestic affairs.

Agriculture Bill

Oliver Letwin Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

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

This is an historic moment, as we last had an agriculture Bill in this House in 1947, since when there have been 15 Prime Ministers and many Governments. We therefore really need to get this Bill right.

The Bill is about agriculture and the environment not just today, but in the future, so I welcome our Secretary of State’s commitment on food security. During the Bill’s passage, I will look for us to adopt for England provisions similar to those in schedule 3 for Wales to ensure that we can support high-quality food production and high animal welfare standards in England and across the United Kingdom. Food security—the ability to have plenty of food, and good food, for our constituents—is very much a public good, and we will debate that further.

While I very much welcome the Bill, I am disappointed that my Select Committee was not offered the opportunity to subject it to prelegislative scrutiny. However, the Secretary of State and Ministers should not worry, because we will do our utmost to ensure that we scrutinise the Bill carefully, clause by clause. While the Bill is very good, I am sure that a little tweak here and there will not do it any harm.

I welcome the long transitional period because it gives farmers certainty over that time. We also need to ensure that as we build stewardship schemes, land management schemes and environmental schemes, we also enter into contracts with farmers of at least five to 10 years. Ministers and the Secretary of State might say that we cannot bind successive Governments, but we must ensure that we have a contract in place so that land management and farming can go hand in hand. We talk as though the environment, food production and farming are all separate, but they are not—they are very much combined. I believe that farmers are the original friends of the earth, and we will ensure that we deliver better soil, a better environment and great food while having as much food security as possible in this country.

I also welcome the Bill’s attempt to tackle unfairness in the supply chain.

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

Before my hon. Friend moves on, I share his ambition in those respects, but does he agree that as the general framework for subsidy support or payment for ecosystem services lies in this Bill, and the general framework for the environment will lie in the environment Bill, it is appropriate that issues such as the contracting he describes should be covered in secondary legislation?

[Neil Parish]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s intervention. He is right that that can be dealt with in secondary legislation, but I am, shall I say, a little bit naturally suspicious, so I am trying to ensure that we get everything covered as soon as possible. I like the Bill’s direction of travel towards the environment, but I am convinced that having good, healthy, affordable food is absolutely essential, and that is one of the issues towards which I will maintain my driving forces.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. The question of how the Select Committee will proceed under his chairmanship seems an important one to resolve. I think that many of us would welcome his driving on that issue, as long as it is done in a way that recognises that we are not trying to build it into the two pieces of primary legislation, which would confuse the issue.

[Neil Parish]

I will take on board my right hon. Friend’s wisdom, and we will look at that as we go through the Select Committee process to ensure that do not do that. I thank him for his intervention.

The Bill very much attempts to tackle unfairness in the supply chain. That is essential. We need to ensure that the groceries code covers all aspects of trade—from the big retailers through to the processors and right down to the big suppliers—so that we can have true fairness in the supply chain. Often, when a consumer buys a product, enough money is paid to the retailer to ensure that there is enough money for the producer, and it is a question of ensuring that that money then gets back to the producer. There is an uneven relationship, with producers often being the weaker partner and not having enough strength in the market.

I welcome the proposals to request data, which will improve transparency in the supply chain, but the way in which that increased transparency will improve fairness in the supply chain remains unclear. Furthermore, there are proposals to streamline support payments and reduce bureaucracy, which I believe we all welcome. I look forward to the Secretary of State and the farming Minister coming before our Select Committee to explain exactly how that can be done. Whether people love or hate the common agricultural policy, there is no doubt that we can have an agricultural policy that suits the four nations of the United Kingdom and that we can devise a better system than the one designed for the 28 countries of the European Union. I have direct knowledge of that, having previously chaired the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee, so I know that we can do better and I look forward to that.

We welcome this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape British farming and the environment. We can improve policies such as our stewardship scheme, for example by ensuring that it runs for a minimum of 10 years and involves forestry. We can also ensure that we do not have to work out when a tree is a sapling and when a sapling is a tree. If we want to include water management, our schemes can include planting trees on banks to hold back water and so on. We can do so much better, and I look forward to hearing about that from Ministers.

Ivory Bill

Oliver Letwin Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

rose—

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

rose—

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

I thank my hon. Friend for his support. There will be an opportunity in Committee to consider whether the scope of the Bill is absolutely as it should be. A number of Members have previously indicated their interest in extending its scope to other forms of ivory, such as narwhal horns, and there will indeed be an opportunity to debate precisely that matter in Committee.

I am also happy to give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin).

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way, but I was going to ask him the same question and he has given exactly the answer I hoped he would give.

[Michael Gove]

It is always a pleasure to be on the same page as my right hon. Friend. I am also happy to give way to the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh).

Draft Waste Enforcement (England and Wales) Regulations 2018

Oliver Letwin Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 General Committees

[Dr Drew]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. Whenever we talk about waste in this place, it is right that we critique what we are doing and ask whether we can do it better. I could go on about how this building operates. I found out through parliamentary questions that we are not that good in how we dispose of our rubbish—out of sight, out of mind. If we cannot get it right in this place, how can we expect the Great British public to take waste more seriously?

I would like the Minister to explain in more detail the difference between what is unlawful and what is undesirable; that may be the argument that is considered when someone is thinking about whether they are responsible for removing certain waste. Take the example of a farmer who has had waste tipped on their land. It has been there some time, because it is difficult to remove. At what stage in the 21 days has it become unlawful? Is the onus entirely on the landowner then to remove it, pay for it and take precautionary measures to stop it from happening again? That is what was discussed in the bit of the meeting that I was in yesterday. We all know from going around the countryside that there are now more fields with boulders at the gates. That is about stopping people from getting access to the fields and, more particularly, stopping people from fly-tipping. That is an ever-present and difficult problem.

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

I was following the hon. Gentleman, but I am now perplexed, because proposed new section 59ZB(4)(a) and (8)(c) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 specifically talks about the occupier not knowingly permitting the disposal of the waste. He cites the case of a farmer who has stuff dumped on him by some fly-tipper, and who has obviously not knowingly permitted it. In that case, the last paragraph of proposed new section 59ZB(8) makes it clear that

“the authority may remove the waste from the land, or take steps to eliminate or reduce the consequences of the keeping”

of it, and that responsibility does not fall on the landholder. It seems to me that the SI is quite clear on the point he is raising.

[Dr Drew]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman, but if that is the case, then where is the money for local authorities? If they are going to have to pick up the bill for all that removal, it will be a substantial increase in both their responsibilities and their funding. It will be more difficult to prove that there has been tipping, because sometimes people are casual in how they have allowed waste to collect on their land, and there may be an argument about whether they encouraged it, and whether it is their waste or something that has been tipped—particularly fly-tipped—as a result of illegal activity. That is what I would like the Minister to look into. I am basically asking where the resources are. If the Government want local authorities to be more proactive, they must give them resources. We know resources are given to the Environment Agency, but the Environment Agency will only take action as a back-up; it will only be brought in subsequently.

To finish my questions to the Minister, I would be interested to know what pressure there is on local authorities, and indeed the Environment Agency, to dispose of this waste appropriately. Of course, in one respect this is a welcome move, because we are dealing with illegality and an ever-present problem. I go back to what I said on the previous SI: I would prefer primary legislation. The Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, which some of us were responsible for, was a good bit of legislation, but it certainly needs updating, because the nature of the problem has grown, and the way in which we deal with it therefore had to change. These SIs are indicative of that. I would prefer to deal with waste through primary legislation; we in the Opposition would give it support, because we feel that waste is such a big issue that it needs this sort of attention.

I hope the Minister has heard what I have to say. I am sure other people will want to make points about this important SI. My concluding remark is that I wish we could deal with this matter through primary legislation. That would make the public more aware that this place is doing something. More particularly, we would have the powers and responsibility to deal with the issue in the way that it should be dealt with.