COP26 Conference Priorities

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr McCabe. I thank the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) for securing the debate, and for highlighting global green finance in particular.

I extend my thoughts to all those impacted by the flooding in China and in central Europe these past weeks. The loss of life is devastating, and the emergency response heroes have my deepest respect. The flooding should be a wake-up call for us all about the unpredictable but inevitable impacts of rising temperatures. We urgently need serious action. Two priority areas for COP26 this autumn are to protect and restore ecosystems and to build resilient infrastructure to mitigate effects of the global heating we have already seen. It is right that those are priority areas, but because we cannot tackle either the problems with nature or the climate emergency without tackling the other as well, it is important that they are thought about equally.

I am concerned about what the Government will bring to the climate negotiations on both those issues, because although Ministers like to talk up their record on carbon and on nature restoration, the reality is far from the rhetoric. For example, we hear a lot from the Government about how they are taking unprecedented measures to restore nature, but we are in an unprecedented crisis and nature is in freefall—41% of UK species are declining, and one in 10 is threatened with extinction.

Faced with that shocking decline, it would be odd if there were any precedent for the action that the Government are taking, which is simply not enough. It is not just me who thinks that. The Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), who spoke earlier, has commented on the Government’s plans for species abundance and nature restoration, saying they are “toothless”. The Committee’s recent report said:

“There is no strategy indicating how new biodiversity policies will work together. Implementation of these policies could be piecemeal, conflicting, and of smaller scale as a result.”

Similarly, the recent Climate Change Committee progress report made this call on the Government:

“Publish an overarching strategy that clearly outlines the relationships and interactions between the multiple action plans in development for the natural environment, including those for peat, trees, nature and plant biosecurity. This must clearly outline how the different strategies will combine to support the Government’s climate change goals on both Net Zero and adaptation, along with the wider environment and other goals.”

On one of the two key themes of COP26, the CCC and the EAC both say that the Government have no clear strategy. Without a joined-up plan for the UK, how do the Government hope to negotiate one for the entire United Nations?

Ministers are right to say that the UK’s global leadership starts with our ambition and delivery at home. However, I am worried that our representatives at the conference simply do not have the credibility to talk about the issues with any authority. One of the key pieces of natural infrastructure to mitigate the effects of the climate emergency is our peatlands. The CCC is clear that we need a plan to restore all blanket bogs. Instead, we see Ministers putting forward legislation that protects only 40% of our deep peat. Another piece of important natural infrastructure is our trees and woodlands. Again, the CCC is clear that we need 17% woodland cover by 2050 to meet net zero. Instead, Ministers propose only 12% coverage.

While a third of the UK’s seas are apparently protected, only 1% are well managed and only 5% of protected areas are safe from bottom trawling. The CCC says that there has been no significant improvement in the management of marine habitats since 2019.

Those are just some examples on adaptation. The Government have made progress on only five of 34 sectors mentioned in the CCC’s progress report. The stream of Government action plans, grants and press releases represents a litany of piecemeal half-measures. Now the Government say they will wait until after COP26 to publish their species abundance targets, but Ministers should take a plan to the conference, lead the debate by example and push for ambitious targets, not wait for an international consensus to emerge before taking any action.

Today, I challenge the Minister. What plans is she taking to COP26 for nature recovery? What ambitious targets will she press for at the negotiating table? How will she establish Britain as the leading light in the debate?

I know that my constituents care deeply about this issue. Every month, I meet with them to discuss different aspects of the negotiations and what they want to see coming out of COP26. They have a clear plan. If the Minister does not, I urge her to meet with us before the conference. If the Government are out of ideas, my constituents have plenty.

Oral Answers to Questions

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

I hope the hon. Gentleman will agree that the Government are taking this issue really seriously. We are the first Government to set a target such as this, aiming to halt the decline of nature, and indeed recover it by 2030. We are working on the detail of that target. It will be set, along with all the other targets, through the Environment Bill, which will enable us to work together to raise up nature everywhere, and we will be announcing those targets in October 2022.

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab) [V]]

I have become accustomed to the flurry of press releases from the Department and the long list of initiatives that the Minister has a habit of reciting when questioned about biodiversity and species abundance. Does she agree with the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), when he says:

“Although there are countless Government policies and targets to ‘leave the environment in a better state than we found it’, too often they are grandiose statements lacking teeth and devoid of effective delivery mechanisms”?

So, where is the plan?

[Rebecca Pow]

I hope the hon. Lady will agree that the plethora of press releases demonstrate just how much work is going on in this Department. We are bringing through groundbreaking legislation that will put in all the measures that we need to tackle these really serious issues. So we have the targets in the Environment Bill and we have a whole range of grants and funds, such as the woodland creation grant and the Nature for Climate peatland restoration grant scheme. They are open now, and people can start applying for them, and we really are moving on this.

Hedgehogs

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) for presenting and introducing the debate in such a passionate manner.

Clearly, this topic matters to many people across the UK and to Members from across the House. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) and others highlighted, the hedgehog has been voted the most popular wild mammal in the UK, and I wish the campaign for a hedgehog hospital, which they have highlighted, every success. I also commend the work of the Hedgehog Preservation Society and hedgehog rescues—which have some fantastic names, such as Snuffles Hedgehog Rescue, which the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) mentioned. Clearly, volunteers and groups up and down the country are working to turn the tide on decline.

We have heard about how people can make their gardens better habitats for hedgehogs. Simple interventions can make a big difference. We heard memories and stories about the wonderful hedgehog, from the right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), sharing the regular sightings when there were as many hedgehogs as people in the UK, to the latest household member of the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), Horace. We heard about the decline and what issues may be causing it, from habitat destruction to pesticides and other issues. We heard about the incredible lives that hedgehogs have, with my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) explaining that they can travel up to 2 km a night, which is extraordinary.

Before I directly address the prickly situation of hedgehogs, I will discuss the Department’s answer to the petition, which I read with great interest. Ministers have rightly framed their response to the plight of hedgehogs in relation to the wider issues of species abundance targets, even if they have yet to propose what those targets will be. We absolutely need biodiversity targets, and they should be ambitious. We should not only halt the decline of hedgehogs and other nature; we should reverse it. Ministers seem to agree. The Secretary of State said that he wants not only to stem the tide of the loss of nature but to turn it around and leave the environment in a better state than we found it. I hope the Minister will use this debate to outline why, in the other place, the Government’s proposals for species abundance targets committed only to

“further the objective of halting a decline in the abundance of species”,

and what that means for hedgehogs. We need more than a halt to the decline; we should be aiming for a dramatic incline in species abundance and trying to reverse the trend for hedgehogs.

Our hedgehog population is threatened, and in response to the petition, the Department says that it is reviewing the species that will be protected as part of the regular five-year review. As highlighted by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), this year the rules have changed. Animals will be automatically added to the protection list only if they are critically endangered, and will be eligible to be added only if they are endangered in the first place. What assurance can the Minister give that hedgehogs will receive the protections they deserve? Hedgehogs fit neither requirement outlined above, but their numbers have rapidly declined—by 50% in rural areas and a third in urban areas over the past 20 years. As the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) asked, what will be done to keep the weaker protections they currently have?

It is fantastic that the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) is the species champion for hedgehogs. He reported on the steep decline since 1950, with hedgehog numbers falling from 30 million to 1.5 million. That is a shocking figure. The need for an holistic approach to nature and development is clear. Will the Minister address what conversations are occurring across Government to protect nature under new planning laws? I agree with the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) that the decline means that we need to protect hedgehog habitats, making considerations in planning, and that we should actively intervene to restore habitats as part of what we do to create nature corridors and in the restoration of hedgerows. We also need to continue to make space for hedgehogs with methods such as creating tunnels, hedgehog highways and hedgehog houses in our urban areas.

The England trees action plan commits to a mere 12% of woodland coverage by the middle of the century, which is 7% less than the Climate Change Committee’s recommendation of 19%. As well as being weak on woodland coverage, the document contains only four references to hedgerows. I would be grateful if the Minister set out what the Department will do specifically to encourage the creation of more of these habitats, which are so beneficial to hedgehogs. In addition to habitat restoration, there is a wider point to make about species abundance targets—a strange approach to biodiversity that is indifferent to the steep decline of the population. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle passionately highlighted, we should not have to wait for a species to become endangered before extending protections to it.

Therefore, I ask the Minister whether her Department has any plans to reverse its approach, in order to ensure that the rhetoric on protecting species abundance matches the reality. If we are aiming for abundance, raising the threshold for species protection is a step in the wrong direction, certainly when species have faced such dramatic reductions in numbers. Will she support the beloved prickly mammal that our country is so passionate about in the upcoming review?

Grouse Shooting

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McDonagh. I thank hon. Members for their excellent contributions to a good-natured debate on a hot topic. I thank the petitioners for signing the petition and the Committee for arranging time for us to discuss this important issue.

I have lived near the moors all my life and I recognise that they are special places, particularly given my Yorkshire heritage. They have inspired great works of literature, songs, and so much more. We have heard many Members speak passionately about how the moors matter to them, including the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). It is really clear that they are rich environments that people are keen to see protected.

It is perhaps obvious to say as a starting point to any sensible policy on grouse shooting that grouse moors are not natural landscapes. They are a form of managed land, and how they are managed has consequences for how we deal with the twin emergencies of nature and climate. The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. Protecting biodiversity, halting the decline of nature and restoring habitats and wildlife are a priority, not just because they are key to tackling the climate emergency, which I will talk about shortly, but also because it is intrinsically important to protect species and ensure that wildlife can be enjoyed by everyone.

Unfortunately, despite the efforts of DEFRA on crime, the persecution of birds is still a huge issue. As a hen harrier champion, I feel obliged to highlight the fact that the hen harrier is one example of a species under threat in the UK. As we have heard from many Members, between 2004 and 2016, the hen harrier population dropped by nearly a quarter—I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for highlighting that. Natural England has shown that hen harriers are 10 times more likely to die or disappear on grouse moors—that needs to change—and found that 72% of birds that were tagged were either confirmed or extremely likely to have been killed illegally.

Although chick numbers have been increasing, unfortunately, moorlands are still described as black holes for certain species. Since the 2018 launch of the controversial brood management scheme, which involves removing chicks from their nests, a further 56 hen harriers have been killed, or their satellite tags have stopped working with no evidence of malfunction, mostly on or next to driven grouse moors. The illegal killing of protected wildlife, especially birds of prey and other predators, seems to be routinely linked to areas where there are grouse moors. We need to ensure that we take more action to prevent those crimes, which I think is a sentiment that has been shared throughout the debate.

This is not just about hen harriers. A Scottish Government study found that a third of golden eagles fitted with satellite tags disappeared in suspicious circumstances. Those are just a few examples of lost biodiversity because the land seems to be managed to eliminate predators to provide more fertile grounds for grouse. That is illustrative of how illegal habitat management can damage the abundance of a species.

As I said, the nature and climate emergencies go hand in hand. Last week, the CCC report was clear that protecting our peatlands is a precondition for meeting our net zero obligations and mitigating the effects of the global heating that we already see. There is a huge amount of work to be done, and there is therefore a huge opportunity for jobs in conservation in our uplands. The majority of our peatlands are in poor condition, even in sites of special scientific interest, and as the CCC says, the effort required to restore them all will be huge.

Post-war draining and burning over the years have also had a huge impact on flooding. It is rare to observe healthy peatlands that store water effectively. Rewetting our peatlands would not only be good for other species, such as curlews, but would help with flood prevention. That is why we must see an end to heather burning being used to create a suitable habitat for grouse. I must say that a number of colleagues who have spoken today seem to be a bit behind their own Government on this issue, as the Government have introduced a ban, although it has limitations that I will come on to later.

We have seen huge amounts of carbon being leaked into the atmosphere over the years, with increased burning year on year. Burning releases roughly 260,000 tonnes of carbon per year, but that is compounded by the damage to the peatland that follows. Our degraded peatlands release 10 million tonnes of carbon per year. Not only does heather burning make the climate emergency worse but it makes the effects of the climate emergency more dramatic.

We have seen that the damage to sphagnum mosses on peatlands causes water to run off the uplands, taking peat with it and affecting the quality of our water, which we have to spend a lot of money on to clean up. Species loss, peatland degradation and higher flood risks are just three costs of managing the landscape artificially. Despite that, however, the shoots remain almost completely deregulated. There are few mechanisms to encourage good behaviour and there is very little to discourage bad behaviour, and the criminal activity does not seem to be ending.

Although Labour has pushed in the Environment Bill for a fuller ban on burning, alternatives such as rewetting and cutting must be supported more fully to reach their full potential, economically and environmentally. In addition, I think the idea that the grouse are ending up on our plates is quite misleading. Only a very small number ever end up entering hospitality settings, unfortunately, and the use of lead is questionable, with even low levels of exposure to lead being linked to health problems. Indeed, even those just using lead shot can develop health conditions.

That is why today I ask the Minister whether she will introduce licensing for grouse shoots in England, as is Labour party policy. Licensing would provide another method to ensure that these habitats are managed responsibly and that the system is more regulated. I also ask her what the plans are to phase out the use of lead shot in grouse-moor shooting. What plans are there to protect valuable non-bird species as well as bird species, such as mountain hares, and if there is to be no licensing, what steps will the Government take to ensure that those who illegally kill protected species and other birds of prey and predators are brought to justice? One issue that has not been mentioned is the steps that the relevant regulatory authorities will take to ensure that residues of other medications used for the rearing of grouse do not get into the wider upland environment, particularly as much of it is in drinking-water catchment areas.

Finally, I make a plea to the Minister. When she responds to the debate, rather than rattling off a list of initiatives that are loosely connected to peat—we have read the peatlands action plan—I would specifically like to hear what the Government will do about the 60% of peatlands that remain unprotected from burning under the so-called ban that was recently brought into law. I thank Members for the way in which they have conducted this debate today; I know that it is a very emotive topic.

[Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

I call the Minister, Victoria Prentis, to respond to the debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I welcome the new shadow Minister, Olivia Blake, to the Front Bench.

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The Government have made some grand claims about the species-abundance targets that they will add to the Environment Bill to protect our native species and wildlife. The Secretary of State has said that the Government want

“not only to stem the tide”

of the loss of nature

“but to turn it around—to leave the environment in a better state than we found it.”

However, last week the Government published their amendment; will the Minister explain why the proposed legislation commits only to

“further the objective of halting a decline in the abundance of species”

rather than reversing the decline?

[Rebecca Pow]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her place. This is the first time that we have had questions in the Chamber together.

This is a tremendous commitment by the Government to halt the decline of nature by 2030. No other country has done anything like this, so we are totally committed to the target. All the framework that we are putting in place will build towards this nature recovery: our local nature recovery strategies; our national nature recovery strategies; our 30% of land and sea protected; our 10 new large-scale landscape recovery schemes; and the entire environmental land management system. I could go on and on. I do not think that I could reiterate more the Government’s commitment to that. We will be consulting on the exact detail of the target in 2022, along with all the other targets in the Environment Bill.

World Oceans Day 2021

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

In is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on securing this important debate on World Oceans Day. As she, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) highlighted, the world’s oceans cover 70% of the planet and could be one of the most effective carbon sinks if they are looked after properly. Oceans not only host an abundance of biodiversity, known and unknown, but they absorb 25% of all CO₂ emissions—50% more than the atmosphere—and store more carbon than all the rainforests combined. Closer to our shores, coastal waters in the UK store an estimated 205 million tonnes of carbon, as several hon. Members highlighted.

Protecting our oceans is fundamental to our fight against the climate emergency. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) about the action by local volunteers to keep beaches clean, and from the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) about the greater efforts needed to tackle plastic waste to protect marine mammals, birds and fish. The hon. Members for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke about our fantastic coastal communities and the horrific threat of damage from sewage and waste. Will the Minister set out what actions and plans there are to address and end the pollution of our seas by plastic and sewage waste?

Protecting our oceans is fundamental to our fight against climate change, and it is really important to look at this globally. Salt marshes and seagrasses are a huge carbon store, holding almost 450 million tonnes of CO₂ per year—half the emissions of the entire global transport system. Experts believe that rewilding key marine ecosystems is absolutely necessary and that around the world they could lock away 1.8 billion tonnes of carbon each year—5% of the savings needed globally to avert climate catastrophe. However, in the UK we have lost 90% of our seagrass meadows to pollution, dredging, bottom trawling and coastal development. If we continue business as usual, our sea shelf sediments could release 13 million tonnes of stored carbon over the next decade.

We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East about current protections being paper parks—a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree. We should be protecting and restoring seagrass, salt marshes, oyster reefs and kelp forests at the same urgency with which we are calling for the protection of rainforests and our own woodlands and peatlands. Ministers recently—perhaps belatedly—published their trees and peatlands strategies, but we have heard little about specifically restoring our marine environments, despite campaigners at the Marine Conservation Society and Rewilding Britain calling for the Government to kick-start a programme of ocean rewilding. So far, their calls seem to have been ignored.

We urgently need an ocean rewilding strategy that, unlike the recent peatlands and trees strategies, is ambitious and detailed enough to meet the scale of the crisis we are facing. When will we see a plan for the restoration of our marine environments? That must also include a sustainable plan for fishing. Evidence shows that over-fishing and practices such as bottom trawling can have disastrous effects on ocean habitats. It is good that the Government have signed up to the UN pledge to protect 30% of our waters, but full protection means implementing no-take zones, as the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) mentioned. If the Government are serious about this pledge, for the sake of our own coastal communities and fishing industry they should outline where these no-fish zones will be, explain the plan, and set out what consultation there has been with the fishing and maritime communities up and down the country and the fishing industry.

I would be interested to know what lessons the Minister has learned from the designation of Plymouth Sound as a national marine park—a designation that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) campaigned hard for. We need to learn from the experience of Plymouth, where the UK’s first national marine park has just been established, so that we can further protect our oceans. This sort of designation builds on the success of the post-war Labour Government’s creation of national parks, and sends a clear message that these waters are important, valued and should be protected for future generations and for our own.

Finally, the Government have made it clear that they intend to amend the Environment Bill to set out targets on species abundance, which will be announced after COP15. I am afraid the pun is too hard to resist: this sounds a little like a cop out. The UK Government should not just reflect the consensus, they should lead the charge against the nature and biodiversity crisis. I am keen to hear the Minister set out what proposals they intend to take to COP15 to protect marine habitats and biodiversity. The Government Front-Bench team has given us a lot of exaggerated rhetoric about the nature and environmental credentials that they hold, but so far the rhetoric has not yet met the reality. Without a clear strategy and with matching clear targets going into the UN conference on biodiversity, I am concerned that we will see more of the same and the UK falling behind on the protections that we need.

Moorland Burning

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of moorland burning.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the important issue of moorland burning. I hope no one in this House would dispute that we are in a climate and nature emergency. That means we have not only a moral imperative to ban this destructive practice, but environmental, ecological and existential imperatives to protect and restore our precious peatlands.

The UK peatlands contain an estimated 3,200 million tonnes of carbon, more than the forests of the UK, France and Germany combined. There is no way that the Government can tackle the climate crisis without ensuring that our peatlands continue to store that colossal quantity of carbon. It would be a catastrophe if it were released and, yet that is exactly what is happening.

While upland peatland should be a net carbon sink, continued mismanagement means that the UK’s peatlands are a net source of emissions. When they could and should be being used for carbon sequestration to safely store carbon, our peat bogs are instead releasing huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds reports that that is equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide released by 140,000 cars a year. The cause is moorland burning.

Between the 1940s and the present, there has been a sevenfold increase in burning on peatland in England alone. In Great Britain, between 2001 and 2011, burning increased at a rate of 11% per year. The more we allow that to continue, the greater the acceleration in the climate crisis we will see before our eyes. We will also see impacts on our environment.

Britain’s blanket bogs make up 10% to 15% of the world’s entire resource. Burning peat bogs dries out peat soil and lowers the water table, changing the flora and fauna to advantage species such as grouse, and transforming these rich, biodiverse habitats into distorted ecologies suitable for only a few animals and plants. We have a duty to preserve their vast biodiversity.

The dried peat soil also negatively impacts our water quality by releasing soil carbon into watercourses, which degrades their quality and increases the expense of cleaning our drinking water. That is because the burning harms the sphagnum mosses, which hold water in the peatlands. While the mosses recover, grasses and heather replace and out-compete them, which means that the water runs off down the hills, taking carbon from the peat with it and leading to polluted water. Burnt bogs are consequently less able to slow water flow, which leads to heavier flooding after rainfall.

I am sure my South Yorkshire colleagues will remember the terrible flooding our region suffered last year: 90% of the homes in the village of Fishlake near Doncaster were flooded last November, and, unfortunately, over a year on, some still have not been able to return to their homes. Funding for flood defences is a pressing issue, particularly when the south-east gets double the funding per person of Yorkshire and the Humber and more than five times that of the north-east. We need the Government to deliver fairer funding for flood defences, but we also need to move the debate away from mitigating the effects of the climate and environment emergency to tackling the causes. That means locking carbon in the ground by restoring our upland peat bogs, slowing the water flow, soaking up heavy rainfall and preventing the next flooding crisis before it occurs.

Peatlands also play a vital role in UK water security and must be protected to preserve the UK’s water supply in the coming years. Researchers at the University of Leeds estimate that 72.5% of the storage capacity of reservoirs in the UK is peatlands-fed water. That demonstrates the crucial role that peatlands play in our water security.

In January, the Committee on Climate Change recommended that peat burning should be banned by the end of 2020. The Government have routinely committed to ending the burns, but we have yet to see any legislative progress towards that. Instead, the Government have asked landowners only to sign voluntary agreements not to burn, and they simply are not working. For the sake of our environment, the Government must announce an immediate ban on this destructive practice and restore our peatlands to their natural bog habitats, so that they can deliver for biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

But that is only the first step. Announcing a ban is not the same as enacting one. For example, in my constituency, the moors at Stanage and Strines are both sites of special scientific interest, which means they should be protected areas, yet both regularly see burning. Due to the lack of proper resourcing and maintenance, too many of our protected areas are protected in name only. This Government’s record on maintaining existing areas of environmental protection shows a sustained failure to protect those protected sites.

In 2010, 43% of SSSIs in England were in favourable condition; by 2020 that had dropped to 39%. The condition of SSSIs in England is actually worse in our national parks and areas of natural beauty than outside them. That is a direct consequence of under-resourcing and underfunding conservation—yet another devastating consequence of the last 10 years of austerity. The Government’s own figures show that public sector spending on biodiversity in the UK fell from £641 million to £456 million between 2012 and 2017—a drop of 29%. The RSPB argues that the Government’s approach to achieving nature targets has completely failed due to

“neglect of basic monitoring and compliance, a reliance on voluntary approaches and unwillingness to regulate, and dwindling public resources for action”—

a damning summation.

As well as committing to banning peatland burning and giving a firm date on which that will come into effect, Ministers must commit to properly resourcing conservation bodies so that they are able to monitor and clamp down on any illegal burning and ensure that peatlands are rewetted and restored. That is why I am so pleased to support Labour’s plan for a national nature service.

An expansion of spending on maintaining or restoring our peatlands is vital if we are to maintain our zero carbon commitments, but it is also a way of providing the employment stimulus we need in the wake of the pandemic; protecting and maintaining our peat bogs and our natural environment in all its diversity goes hand in hand with creating good-quality public sector jobs.

We should take inspiration from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps between 1933 and 1942, whose workers planted 3 billion trees and paved the way for America’s system of national and state parks, which were also a central part of the new deal. The national nature service should be at the heart of the green new deal for workers, creating a zero carbon army. We need to manage our moorlands effectively and to lock CO₂ into the ground. At the same time, that would provide a host of secure jobs and benefit many people, including young black, Asian and minority ethnic workers, who have been hit hardest by the employment crisis. It would also help to diversify the conservation sector.

Nobody in this debate supports the deregulation of moorlands. The idea that setting fire to large swathes of our countryside is a responsible form of regulation and management is completely incredible. It releases millions of tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere, making the climate emergency worse. It destroys habitats and damages the ecosystem and ecologies. As fires rage on our uplands, they increase the threat of floods from our lowland rivers.

We cannot rely on the good will of landowners to stop the burning—just ask the residents of Hebden Bridge and the Calder valley. We all saw on our TVs the damage done to those communities by last year’s flooding, and many now attribute those floods to heather burning on Walshaw moor. Instead, we need to restore and re-wet our peatlands, using them as one of the many natural solutions to the climate crisis. To do that, we must end the year-on-year cuts to spending on the environment and set out a plan for investing in nature. That means having a national nature service to create well-paid, secure, unionised jobs. We need to lock CO₂ into the ground and to protect biodiversity and our natural environment’s fragile ecologies. We also need to ensure that those who seek to burn protected peatlands face the full weight of the law.

I hope the Minister will take this opportunity to outline the timetable for bringing forward legislation. It is time to end the fires, floods and climate chaos. It is well past time we banned the burn.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

May I remind colleagues that there are five minutes for the Opposition Front Benchers and 10 minutes for the Government. This debate is due to finish at 17.32 pm. I am not putting a time limit on speeches, but we have eight other speakers apart from the Front Benchers and the mover of the motion at this point. Please bear that in mind.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Many years ago, I joined the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. I did so because I understood it was a charity whose purpose was to protect birds. It is not the royal society for the politicisation of birds, but is quite clear that the RSPB has long had a campaign, motivated primarily, I suspect, by its hatred of grouse shooting. I do not shoot myself, but I live in the countryside and I see how shooting shapes the countryside and preserves it. In particular, I salute the work of gamekeepers. The fact is that the evidence does not support this campaign of the RSPB.

The recent call from the RSPB to stop burning peat—a rather emotive phrase in itself—seems to deliberately confuse controlled and uncontrolled burning. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill) has made clear, the press release makes six references to burning peatland and blanket bog, all in connection with management practices and consents that are actually for the controlled burning of heather, the surface vegetation, and not peat, which is the underlying soil. Controlled burning of surface vegetation is permitted only in the winter, when it is cold and wet. It is deliberately limited to small areas—the heather and grass burning code suggests a maximum of 30 metres by 600 metres, with cut margins as firebreaks surrounding them and a firefighting team of gamekeepers in attendance with fire fogging units and leaf blowers to extinguish flames quickly.

I was inspired to come along to this debate by the excellent article by Lord Botham. I always knew he was a great cricketer and I once saw him do his wonderful century, but I did not know that he was such a fine campaigner for rural issues and rural people. It is about time that people such as Ian Botham were allowed to speak up for those of us who live in the countryside.

Grouse moors are not the emissions problem. Farming and forestry produce far higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions per hectare than grouse moors. There is a risk to wildlife of not burning, as Lord Botham said in his article last week:

“For years the RSPB has been attacking the ancient practice of burning heather during damp winters. Britain’s gamekeepers use such controlled activity to reduce the risk of summer wildfires—just like indigenous people in Australia and North America.”

[Olivia Blake]

Is the hon. Member aware of some the most recent research, which shows that 68% of wildfires in the higher uplands have actually been caused by so-called controlled cold fires?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I suggest to the hon. Lady that any research that comes from the RSPB or related organisations should be treated with a great deal of scepticism. I suspect that they have a political agenda. The fact is that the RSPB distorts the science on burning. The Times reported how it does so. A dozen top scientists—a dozen, I say to the hon. Lady—wrote that RSPB press releases on burning bore “only passing resemblance” to the science.

The RSPB is a charity. It has to act like a charity and not like a political organisation. It is all very well to argue, “Ban the burn”—an emotive phrase, but that is to try to simplify something that is highly complex in reality. The royal society—it is a “royal society”—makes no distinction between two different things: the controlled burning of heather for wildlife management and the burning of peatland. Shooting requires careful land management that protects the growth and survival of many species of birds. Rural people have spent decades in careful custodianship of the land and the wildlife that lives in it. Despite that, they find themselves the target of RSPB campaigns that would do serious harm to the environment.

Farmers and gamekeepers must be central to the preservation of wildlife in this country. They live and work in the countryside. There is simply no way around that; nobody else has the resources to protect our countryside. As Lord Botham pointed out, the seed gamekeepers put out for pheasants also feeds lapwings, yellowhammers and corn bunting. I live in the countryside, in a cottage on a shooting estate, and I see how the gamekeepers preserve our wild birds.

What about thinning out the canopy of trees, so that the branches do not close in and deprive bushes and shrub life of much needed sunlight? Will the RSPB do that? No. Will Members of Parliament do that? No. Gamekeepers and farmers do that. Without managed burns, we increase the risk of uncontrolled wildfires, as has already been argued. As a result, nature and biodiversity suffer, plant life dies and habitats for species wither away. The richness of countryside is dulled, if the knowledge of people who work in the countryside is doubted.

Grouse managers aim to burn the surface biomass, heather and other plants, not peat. Controlled fires are excellent for that, but without them there is a danger of wildfires. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby said, that cannot be denied. Wildfires, by their nature, are uncontrolled; they can become very hot and spread the fire to burn the underlying peat, rather than just the surface. The bigger picture here is a massive gap between rural England and urban England. Such a simplistic statement as, “Ban the burn”, shows an ignorance and neglect of rural issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Olivia Blake]

I thank everyone who has taken part in today’s rowdy debate. I want to quickly clarify a few points, if I may, about the body of scientific evidence. I will quote from the International Union for Conservation of Nature peatland programme’s position statement. The first point states:

“The current body of available scientific evidence indicates that burning on peatland can result in damage to peatland species, microtopography and wider peatland habitat, peat soils and peatland ecosystem functions.”

The second point, which is what I have been getting at, states:

“Healthy peatlands do not require burning”

to be maintained. I am not saying for one moment that our moorlands do not need to be maintained, but that the practice of burning creates a self-reinforcing circle. We burn the heather, it comes back, then we burn it and dry it out, and then it comes back. That is why the number of fires has been increasing year on year. Finally, just on identity politics—

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions. Have a good evening.

Agriculture Bill

Olivia Blake Excerpts

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

[Gary Sambrook]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. In fact, my family name comes from Shropshire, so I have a little bit of agricultural heritage.

The reason I am speaking in this debate is that many people across the whole country, in cities and in rural areas, care deeply about standards in food and especially deeply about standards in animal welfare. It makes us proud to be British that we have such high standards, especially towards animals. That is why I was proud to stand on our party’s manifesto, which was incredibly clear in stating:

“In all of our trade negotiations, we will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards.”

Indeed, all the EU food safety provisions, including existing import requirements, would be transferred into UK law via the withdrawal agreement Act, as their removal would require new legislation. That is why I am supportive of the Government tonight. I take the Minister and the Bill at their word, because I feel passionately that we are going to deliver on these things.

Time and again, we hear the same old arguments and scaremongering from the Opposition Benches. To me, this boils down to two things that we regularly hear. One is the hatred of Brexit and the resistance to acknowledging that that vote took place. The other thing that worries me is the growing anti-American tone that we hear seeping through from the Labour Benches, and especially from the Benches of the separatists. That really does concern me. We hear it in the arguments about chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef all the time, yet those things are already prevented by law from being imported into this country. The Bill does not change that in any way. I can reassure my constituents, who care deeply about these issues, that that will not change.

The article that my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) wrote over the weekend was an excellent way of describing the situation that we are in today. Are we really going to pass a law that would harm many of the world poorest people? That would be the indirect consequence of these Lords amendments. The EU does not have the levels of protectionism that these amendments are suggesting. Are they really saying that EU standards are too low? I will be supporting the Government today and voting against the Lords amendments.

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

You might be surprised to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that one third of the land in Sheffield Hallam is agricultural land, and my husband is the trustee of a city farm. Farming in all its forms is of great interest to me.

The Government have insisted that when we leave the EU, our trading standards will be world-leading, world-beating, the best, the greatest, and the most fantastic in the world. In fact, they have started to sound a bit like the President of the US, and they obviously want to make a sweetheart deal with him. Our farmers are not convinced. I have been contacted about the Bill and the amendments under debate by hundreds of constituents, farmers and producers alike, and every one of them is concerned about the future of our trading standards on food, animal welfare and the environment, as well as the impact of that on their farms and what is on their plate.

That is no wonder, because although Ministers talk about high standards, without the amendments nothing will protect British farmers from being undercut on food and animal welfare standards. The rhetoric about protectionism is reckless; we are talking about people’s incomes. The Minister may say that we do not need to worry about food such as chlorinated chicken because the EU withdrawal agreement has carried over existing standards, but my constituents do not trust the Government on that. We have seen what respect the Government have already shown to this issue, and there is nothing to stop bans on such products being overturned through secondary legislation. If the Government want to set minds at rest, why will they not accept amendment 16 to guarantee that those bans will not be lifted without proper scrutiny in Parliament?

In any case, the EU’s import restrictions apply only to products that are prohibited because they breach our standards on food safety, not those on animal welfare and environmental protection. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) said when highlighting the issue of sow stalls in California, it is right to ban such things in the UK. That cruel and inhumane method of producing pork should also be banned from all our imports on animal welfare grounds. We need explicit guarantees on animal welfare, but so far we have none.

Given that UK farming accounts for roughly one tenth of our national CO₂ emissions, we need a Bill that enshrines action on climate change. Why the Government are so averse to proposing any obligatory measures to meet our net-zero targets is beyond me. We need the Bill to be more robust, to enshrine the commitment of zero-carbon emissions in the sector, and to support British farmers and the health of our people by protecting food and animal welfare standards. Without the proposed amendments, the Bill will fall well short of that.

[Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)]

I welcome the Minister’s opening speech, which I listened to carefully. It did a lot to assuage the concerns of my constituents in Stafford, which is a rural constituency, and of many farmers across the UK. However, I also understand the sentiments of colleagues about the amendments under debate. I sat on the Trade and Agricultural Bill Committees earlier this year, so I had the opportunity thoroughly to question stakeholders and Ministers, as well as to scrutinise the Bill line by line. I feel that the Bill now provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create an effective agricultural scheme that backs British farmers.

I agree with my hon. Friends the Members for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) and for Keighley (Robbie Moore) when they said that the previous scheme for agriculture, the common agricultural policy, has been a failure. From an agricultural perspective we have seen sluggish improvements to productivity, poor farm incomes, regressive distribution of funding to the largest landowners, ineffectual rules, and a failure to encourage the next generation of farmers. I believe that Staffordshire farmers deserve better, and this Bill will be better.

Early this year I invited the International Trade Secretary to my constituency, and we held a joint roundtable with local farmers, who directly raised their concerns with her about animal welfare standards post Brexit.

I believe that British farmers have some of the highest food standards in the world, which is something that we should be extremely proud of. From my meeting with Staffordshire farmers and local NFU members just last month, I do appreciate that maintaining these high standards comes at a high financial cost for the producer. British farmers must absolutely not be put in a situation where they are having to compete with lower quality food from abroad. I was very pleased that the Government listened to the views of the NFU, myself and other colleagues earlier this year and have now established that independent Trade and Agriculture Commission, which was referenced in Amendment 18.

Environment Bill

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 26th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on such an important issue. It is right that we legislate to protect the environment, our water and the air we breathe. It is also vital that we preserve the biodiversity of our countryside and woodlands and conserve our areas of outstanding natural beauty, such as the Peak district in my constituency, for the enjoyment of everyone.

I am pleased that, after pressure on the Government, the Bill now includes a reference to climate change enforcement. If the rising sea levels, fires and floods do not constitute a threat to our environment, I am not sure what does. The fires in Australia have affected 1.25 billion animals and, according to WWF estimates, have harmed 30% of the koala population. There is abundant scientific research to demonstrate that global heating will result in the extinction of thousands of plants and animal species, and the UK is not immune. It is nonsense to say that we are in favour of biodiversity but not lift a finger to stop the carbon emissions that have led to the destruction of ecosystems and fragile ecologies, making the 10% increase in biodiversity almost impossible to deliver. It is not meaningful to talk about protecting the environment without also talking about how we end the climate catastrophe that is currently wreaking havoc across the globe.

The only way to secure our environment and defend the diversity of our wildlife in the long term is to halt rising temperatures and reach zero emissions by the 2030s. That means fundamentally reshaping our economy and infrastructure by handing power to the people with the greatest interest in stopping climate catastrophe—not the bankers, as we heard earlier, or big businesses, but working people.

Despite the changes to the Bill, the truth is that it falls well short of the protections we need to secure our natural environment for the years to come. The EFRA Committee charged with scrutinising the proposals was right to call them a missed opportunity. This was an opportunity to enshrine environmental protections in all aspects of our public institutions. Instead, the proposals only oblige Ministers to act and only with mealy-mouthed “'due regard to” the principles in the Bill. It was an opportunity to make Britain a beacon of environmental standards for the whole world to follow. Instead, there is no provision in the Bill to prevent our own standards from slipping and falling below those of the European Union; in fact, the environmental principles outlined in it represent a significant downgrading of the principles behind our existing environmental protections. It was an opportunity to create a world-leading, independent institution for environmental auditing. Instead, the Government are proposing to establish an organisation with nowhere near the level of independence that is required to hold Ministers and public bodies to account.

At a time when No. 10 can sack a Chancellor for refusing to fire his staff, are we really to have any confidence that the Government will not seek to interfere in the decisions made by the proposed Office for Environmental Protection? I wonder whether the intention is to create a Cassandra-esque body so that those in power can wrongly ignore the truth that it speaks. To tackle climate change and protect our environment, we need democratic and independent institutions that have the power to enforce action on climate chaos in a meaningful way.

We can either face up to the reality of the climate crisis and transform our institutions, our economy and our infrastructure, or consign our planet and our wildlife to environmental catastrophe. That is the decision we face. It is a historic opportunity and a historic responsibility. I am sorry to say that it is an opportunity that the Bill squanders and a responsibility that it shirks.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Marco Longhi to make his maiden speech.