Food Waste and Food Distribution

Paul Girvan Excerpts

Tuesday 16th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) for securing this debate.

I want to take two different lines. One is the household; many people have made reference to the amount of food waste generated within the home. I will give a small example of what is happening. Many community groups in my constituency have identified that homes are under tremendous pressure, not just from the cost of living; their budgets are being squeezed in every way. These groups have made efforts to bring people together to educate those in the home who are cooking, providing and doing the shopping on how they can prepare meals and generate a shopping list.

Unfortunately, the way in which our supermarkets are laid out is not necessarily helpful. We used to walk into a shop with a list, and we would get what we wanted from behind the counter. Now we walk around the shop and everything is put out to tempt us to say, “Well, I think I need this.” Whenever I go shopping, my wife always says that it costs us twice as much as whenever she does it. My eyes are always bigger than my belly, and unfortunately I decide that certain things are needed when, to be truthful, they are not.

A number of community groups in my area have been running programmes where they are bringing people in, and are learning them how to put together a menu and to shop for a week. We have already heard that almost 70% of food waste is generated in the home and about how we can deal with that. We produce almost 11 million tonnes of food waste in the United Kingdom. That predominately goes to landfill, producing methane. There are other ways to deal with that waste rather than sending it to landfill. We can recover energy from our food waste by using technology.

Worldwide, 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted. Much of that is down to lifestyle and how we have learned to be a consumable society; and, as a consequence, we produce far more food than we could ever usefully use. My hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said that whenever he was young, the shop would look at whatever was left and see what was close to its end—not its sell-by date, because sometimes the sell-by date does not mean the food cannot be consumed.

Food used to be more local; we are now a global market, and our food comes from all over the world. That contributes to part of the problem because we have created different tastes within our society, including people wanting to eat certain foods that are not produced locally. We used to eat berries that were only produced at certain times of the year. Now we want them all year, so they have to be brought in. We have generated a consumable society that is fuelled by what we have on our shelves.

It is important that we put measures in place. The Food Waste (Reduction) Bill was introduced to Westminster in 2015. Certain parts of that legislation have been mentioned this morning. There are parts we want to encourage, and the large retailers have taken a lead in many areas. We should support them totally; on many occasions, they are ahead of what we are attempting to do as legislators. Certain measures should be brought in, including tax breaks for those who are efficient and do not produce much waste. That has to be considered as an opportunity.

Generally, we should be encouraging the housewife—maybe that is the wrong term to use—or those who are cooking in the home to be far more efficient about what they put on the table and what they do whenever they go out shopping, and ensure that we do not buy more than we can consume. That message will go back. I want to thank those charities that have been so successful in putting forward the FareShare scheme and the food reduction system. The Too Good To Go scheme is also fantastic; I was unaware of it until recently. I again thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central for securing this debate.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Girvan Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

There has been a long-standing arrangement between Norway and the EU under which, broadly speaking, Norway has some access to blue whiting in the North sea and in return the EU—we have a share of this—has some access to Arctic cod. Those negotiations are about to commence again. This year there will be an EU-Norway bilateral to decide these matters.

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

Concerns have been raised about the possible requirement for pet passports after the transition period. People from Northern Ireland want to know that, as part of the United Kingdom, they will have the same right to travel to the UK with their dogs, particularly guide dogs, without additional documentation or pet passports.

[George Eustice]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. We are aware of this, and it is one of the issues that we are seeking to address at a technical level and through the Joint Committee process for resolving how these finer details of the Northern Ireland protocol will work.

Landfill Sites: Odour

Paul Girvan Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Aaron Bell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I know of that case, as my father-in-law lives nearby in the village of Purton. Capping the sites off, as will eventually happen at Walley’s Quarry, offers residents some hope in the end. I recognise that operators are employing better technology all the time, but that is no consolation to people enduring the smell now.

I asked my constituents to contribute their thoughts and I will quote from some of their emails. Some constituents report “retching” and feeling sick from the odour, with others describing feeling as though they can taste the smell and it is catching the back of their throat. One described the smell as

“a blight on our community.”

Many residents report that they can identify the smell further away, sometimes in the centre of Newcastle, which is bad for its nightlife and day activities, or further north in Wolstanston and Bradwell. Other constituents highlight that they feel unable to use their garden, to open their windows or to hang washing outside. Most worrying are the cases of those for whom the smell is persistent inside their homes. The odour is also worrying for those with existing breathing difficulties and conditions such as asthma. They believe it is making their health worse.

I myself smelt the tell-tale “rotten egg” odour at times during my canvassing and campaigning for the general election, though it was notable that residents on the same estate had vastly differing responses to the smell on the same day.

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. In my constituency there is a landfill site—which I call a dump—that deals with about 60% of all waste in Northern Ireland. Even after such sites are closed off, if the gase is not flares off, methane leaks into the atmosphere and still causes a problem years after. We have no way of policing this. Minimum standards are employed by our Environment Agency, but we need to go way beyond that. We need to set higher standards and enforce them, so that operators abide by them. We do not currently see best practice.

[Aaron Bell]

I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman’s constituents. In the case I am discussing, the operators do flare off the methane that has been produced and that will be an ongoing requirement for them after they start capping it off, but where the Environment Agency is not strong enough, we need to do more, as I will say in my requests to the Minister.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), who as a Minister cannot speak in this debate, told me of similar problems in her constituency. She relates that her residents have happily lived by a landfill site for many years, but in the last few months they have experienced a pungent eggy smell, which has at times engulfed their homes. They have experienced inertia on the part of the Environment Agency in effectively managing their concerns.

My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Robert Largan) discussed with me the landfill site in Arden Quarry in Birch Vale, which is a major concern for many of his constituents, even though the operator is working hard to reduce odours. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling)—a fellow Staffordshire MP, who as a member of the Cabinet also cannot speak in this debate, though she wanted to attend—has had similar problems in her constituency with landfills emitting odourous gases and she has worked hard to improve the situation for local residents. This is affecting constituents around the country and Members in all parts of the House.

Since being elected in December, I have held meetings with local campaigners, some of whom I mentioned earlier, the Environment Agency, and RED Industries Ltd, which runs the site. The Environment Agency is responsible for the regulation of the environmental permit for Walley’s Quarry landfill site, and it carried out an ambient air monitoring study between 15 January and 25 June 2019. The objective of the study was to identify the local sources of air pollution and to quantify the environmental impact of the emissions on the surrounding area and the local community. The most recent survey demonstrated that there was a continuous source of methane and hydrogen sulphide—the latter being the “rotten egg” smell that people find so distasteful—coming from the direction of the landfill, and it found that hydrogen sulphide concentrations occasionally exceeded odour limits, though not health limits, which are measured against WHO guidelines, as I mentioned earlier.

Further, I find it disappointing that the Environment Agency does not go so far as to say that the smell is coming from the landfill in its report. Rather, it says:

“Directional analysis showed that there was a continuous source of CH4 and H2S from the direction of Walleys Quarry landfill site and that a build-up of these compounds was seen under conditions of low wind speed and temperature and high pressure.”

It is disappointing that the agency that is supposed to be looking out for people cannot point the finger when it should.

What am I asking the Minister to do? First, it would be extremely helpful if the she or her departmental colleagues came to Newcastle-under-Lyme to see—or perhaps smell—the problem for themselves. I believe my residents and the operator would also welcome dialogue with the Department. The Environment Agency needs a stronger hand in dealing with operators. I think my constituents would agree with me when I say that at present the Environment Agency is a little bit toothless in dealing with issues as they arise. What is really needed is an empowered agency, able to properly hold operators accountable. Will the Minister consider giving the Environment Agency a broader range of powers to allow it to deal more quickly and effectively with minor and frequent breaches that do not necessarily lead to the revocation of a licence?

We also need to look at the role of local communities. Local communities have few options for remedy against a waste operator where the operator acts in compliance with its environmental permit and is not causing demonstrable adverse health effects. Odour is not something which can be measured objectively; quantifying and characterising odours is very challenging because each person’s sensitivity to odours varies. Further, reaching a judgment on whether odour constitutes a statutory nuisance can take time, especially if the occurrence is unpredictable and only apparent for short periods, or is dependent on particular weather patterns. Local communities know best how their lives are affected. Their needs should be considered throughout monitoring and investigation, so that their concerns are taken seriously.

More generally, the regulations governing odour are not fit for purpose. A site that smells may not be causing health issues, as judged by World Health Organisation criteria, but that is not to say that it should be allowed to smell. The example of Walley’s Quarry landfill site highlights that an operator may be compliant with its permit and planning permission, but that does not mean that it is not causing offence to its neighbours. As one of the richest and most developed countries in the world, we should aspire to higher standards than the bare minimum stipulations of WHO. I argue that the bar of statutory nuisance is too high. Will the Minister look again at whether that is the best measure to determine if a landfill site’s smell is at an acceptable level in view of its location? The level of odour in Silverdale is not fair to residents. It has a significant impact on their quality of life, even though it is at a legally permissible level. That needs to change.

I also argue that the practices of the Environment Agency fuel a lack of trust between communities and the agency. Communities want to feel that they have been listened to; they want to know that their concerns are being taken seriously, and that they can trust that effective monitoring is taking place when they express concerns. The persistence of the problem of odour in Newcastle-under-Lyme has understandably created a sense of powerlessness in the community, and residents do not feel that their concerns have been taken seriously enough by the Environment Agency. It took nearly six months for the findings of the monitoring exercise last year to be made public, which contributed to a regrettable sense of suspicion among some of my constituents. Will the Minister consider asking the agency to make the data from site monitoring more easily available to residents and the general public? If such data were made available publicly, live on a website or with a short delay for quality assurance, communities would be able to see directly for themselves that monitoring is taking place; they would be able to understand the levels of air pollution and odour being detected. That small change could go some way to help communities to feel less anxious, fitting in with the general agenda of the greater government transparency.

Finally, will the Minister work with her colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that no future landfill sites are allowed to be built so close to where people live, as is the case in Newcastle-under-Lyme? Living next to a landfill site will never be pleasant, and the Environment Agency acknowledges that no landfill site will ever be odour-free. To avoid problems in the duture, we should tighten up planning rules to ensure that landfill sites cannot be permitted within a certain distance of existing housing. I am grateful to the Minister for listening so attentively, and I look forward to her response.

Waste Incineration: Regulation

Paul Girvan Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Grogan]

I say to my hon. Friend that I used to chair the last but one coalmine to close in this country; Hatfield Colliery, in Yorkshire. Incinerators actually emit more CO₂ per megawatt-hour generated than any other fossil fuel source, including coal. On CO₂ and global warming grounds alone, we must consider that.

I will go back to my remarks about whether we have enough incinerators. Only one independent analysis is widely respected: Eunomia’s. It is an environmental consultant with expertise in this area that has issued 12 reports, the last of which was published in July 2017. The analysis clearly demonstrates that operational incineration capacity has grown rapidly, from 6.3 million tonnes in 2009-10, to 13.5 million tonnes in 2017. Additional capacity is assessed to be 4.8 million tonnes.

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

I appreciate that many councils and local authorities are entering contracts relating to providers of incineration. In doing so, they are diverting waste that should be recycled, because of those contractual agreements. That is creating a big problem.

[John Grogan]

The hon. Gentleman hits the nail on the head. It creates a perverse incentive for local authorities which, on the one hand, have a duty to recycle, but on the other must fulfil a contract that they have entered into. That means that when Eunomia did the analysis it looked at a series of projections, assessing the capacity of the incinerators against the availability of the feedstock of waste. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), I would point out the assumed levels of recycling to which we are committed in Yorkshire in particular. We are committed to a recycling rate of 55% by 2025, 60% by 2030, and 65% by 2035. Eunomia and, indeed, the Government have accepted that we will have enough incineration capacity to meet the residual waste, given those recycling targets. Tom Murray, the deputy head of resources and waste policy at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said this year:

“Our evidence is suggesting that, when we meet recycling targets…recycling will leave no capacity gap”

with respect to incineration.

Dangerous Dogs Act: Staffordshire Bull Terriers

Paul Girvan Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[George Eustice]

I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is because of atrocious cases of the sort that he has described that I have always wanted the maximum sentence for the most egregious cruelty to animals to be raised. It is now Government policy to increase the maximum penalty to five years. We have always had in mind that activities such as dog fighting would be one of the key targets for that maximum penalty.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton and others talked about Battersea Dogs & Cats Home. Back in 2011—long before my hon. Friend’s recent visit—I went there with him as a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. There was a similar case of a pit bull that had to be destroyed when the officers at Battersea thought that that animal could have been rehomed. I visited Battersea again about three years ago, when I held this portfolio, to discuss the matter with them. From memory, about 27 pit bulls had come in that year, all of which had to be destroyed under the current legislation, and more than 300 other dogs had come in, a significant proportion of which were judged to be not suitable for rehoming and also had to be destroyed. Given what we know about the breed, how often would a charity actually have the confidence to rehome a pit bull with a family? My hon. Friend said the science is not precise, and there is some truth in that, but there are police officers who are trained in typing, have expertise in this area and are actually quite good at ascertaining when a dog is a banned breed, particularly when it is a pit bull.

This is not the only area where we have what one might call breed-specific legislation. In the provisions around public rights of way, there are restrictions on farmers from having dairy breeds of cattle on a footpath at certain times of the year, because dairy breeds are judged to be more aggressive and more likely to attack people than beef breeds. We know that there is a link between the behaviour and temperament of cattle and breed. In my part of the world, we have breeds such as the South Devon, which is a very laid-back, west country breed, which is calm and docile. In Scotland, they have the Aberdeen Angus, which is a slightly more feisty animal. On the continent, there are some more unpredictable breeds.

There are other powers available to the police and local authorities to deal with this issue; the Dangerous Dogs Act is not the only resort. Both have the power to tackle antisocial behaviour with dogs and to intervene early to prevent a minor incident escalating into something more serious. For example, the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 introduced a range of measures to tackle antisocial behaviour, including that which involves dogs. This includes community protection notices, which aim to prevent unreasonable behaviour that is having a negative impact on the quality of life of the local community. These are being used to good effect by police and local authorities across England and Wales.

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

Many people report incidents, thinking they are acting in the best interest. The reaction, therefore, will be that a police officer or a council official will be asked to go along and lift a dog from a family home, because it has been identified as being a Staffordshire bull terrier. It might only be a very good family pet, but if some well-meaning individual in the community decides to do that, an officer will have to go in and identify whether it is a Staffordshire bull terrier. We have had the same legislation in Northern Ireland associated with American pit bulls and we have had all sorts of problems identifying what breed a dog is. I am a great believer in deed not breed. We should stop hounding those who have good pets that are not creating a problem, but deal with the ones that do.

[George Eustice]

To reiterate what I said earlier, the Government have no plans at all to add the Staffordshire bull terrier to the prohibited list. We have been clear about that in response to the e-petition. We have trained police officers who are skilled in identifying the breed and type of dogs, in particular the pit bull terrier, which is the main banned breed that we are concerned with.

In addition to the community protection notices, many forces use non-statutory letters and notices. Those can come in the form of “coming to notice” warning letters and voluntary acceptable behaviour contracts. The notices are simple to use and remove the need for a statutory notice or prosecution. The Government are also committed to public safety and to tackling dangerous dogs through communication and education. Co-operation between the police and local authorities is vital. That is why we have endorsed initiatives such as LEAD—the local environmental awareness on dogs scheme—which encourages the police and local authorities to co-operate and share information when there has been a minor incident, and to provide advice to the dog owner on dog control issues to improve public safety. We also support an increase in awareness at all levels of society, as the hon. Member for Workington (Sue Hayman) highlighted. We are aware that many police forces and welfare charities, such as the Dogs Trust, visit schools to help to raise awareness of responsible dog ownership, and we fully endorse that work.

As several hon. Members pointed out, we need to do more to ensure that dogs are properly socialised, whatever their breed. We have done a lot to tackle the online trading of dogs through our work with the pet advertising advisory group. Dogs that are advertised and sold online have often not been socialised or raised properly. We have also introduced new requirements on pet breeding, particularly dog breeding, and on the sale of dogs to tighten up the licensing regime for people who breed and sell puppies as pets.

We have had a good and thoughtful debate on this contentious issue. I do not pretend that the legislation is perfect, and I understand that some people consider elements of it arbitrary, but for the reasons that I have given, the Government do not believe there is a case for changing the legislation at this time. We believe that we can deal with some of those exceptional circumstances through the exempted index.

UK Fisheries Policy

Paul Girvan Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Scott Mann]

I absolutely agree on enforcement. I am sure the Minister listened to that and will respond in his own way. I understand that we have not been particularly good at enforcing our own fishery. Our fishermen need that confidence to move forward.

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

On that point, some very large trawlers make their way into the Irish sea. They start at the very southern tip of the Irish sea and work their way right up. They are not necessarily from Great Britain—I am talking about the Spanish trawlers that come in and lift everything out of the sea in that area, leaving absolutely nothing after they have left. They can trawl right up to the beaches. We need protection zones within this policy.

[Scott Mann]

I absolutely agree with that, too. The hon. Gentleman very well sums up the conversations that I have with my fishermen, who also feel the pressure from foreign boats off the 12-mile zone.

It is important to me that, when Britain takes control of its waters, it sets its own terms of access. We want our fishermen to be confident that, in post-Brexit Britain, we will have control of our territorial waters and that we will be able to export our fish to European countries and further afield without tariffs. If we leave the EU without a trade deal and are under World Trade Organisation rules, the tariffs for exporting seafood to the EU generally range from 0% to 24%. Both fresh cod and prawns currently attract a 12% tariff. For European economic area countries such as Norway, cod has a zero tariff, while prawns have a 12% tariff.

If we get a free trade deal, tariff barriers will not be a problem. I would certainly welcome that. On the other hand, we may face a situation in which the EU will settle for zero tariffs only if we give it some access to British waters. That question will need to be considered very carefully by the Minister and the fishing industry in general.

There is a disparity between the amount of fish we import and the amount we export. We currently export a staggering amount of fish and shellfish that could perfectly well be eaten within the UK. Approximately 52% of the seafood that enters the UK supply chain is imported from abroad or is landed by foreign boats. For example, nearly all spider crabs caught off the Cornish coastline are currently exported to Europe, with fishermen exporting 98% of all the crabs we catch. I want to know what is wrong with those crabs. Brown crabs are a fantastic species to eat, and we should celebrate the spider crab, which is a fantastic-tasting species—many restaurants in France regularly serve spider crabs. Likewise, we catch a fantastic collection of cuttlefish that is also exported. We must continue to import and export to serve demand from Europe, but there is certainly a case to be made for more British-caught produce.