Flood Recovery Framework

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Flood Recovery Framework.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I look forward to the debate, which is important because flooding remains a highly topical issue for many of our constituents who have suffered the appalling consequences of flooding this winter. I regret to predict that many more may suffer that fate during the years ahead as climate change provides more rainfall events of more persistent duration and at unpredictable times of the year.

However, I am not here to forecast the weather or to dwell on the causes or impacts of climate change. There are plenty of other opportunities to do that, not least through the work of the Environmental Audit Committee —which I have the honour to chair—and our latest, recently launched inquiry on climate and security. The consequences of flooding for national infrastructure are one of the issues being considered.

I will offer a few initial words of context on the flooding challenge we face. The Met Office’s “State of the UK Climate” report in 2022 confirmed how the UK has become wetter over the past few decades, albeit with significant annual variation. The third UK climate change risk assessment in 2021 identified flooding as one of the most important climate change adaptation challenges facing the UK. Six of the 10 wettest years on record in the UK have occurred since 1998, and this past year has seen the most rainfall for any 18-month period in England since Met Office rainfall records started in 1836.

[Darren Henry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for securing the debate. My constituency saw devastating flooding to homes and businesses during Storms Babet and Henk. Each time such storms occur, the same areas of Broxtowe are severely damaged. Does he agree that we must act now, not just to compensate, but to ensure that we mitigate against that level of damage occurring in the future?

[Philip Dunne]

I will go on to talk about multiple flood events involving the same properties, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right: there is an obligation on the Environment Agency, as the lead on this issue, to identify preventive measures that can be taken to stop flooding of properties. Few things are more devastating for a householder than to see their home get flooded, but one can barely imagine what it must be like to live through that multiple times. Most of us in the Chamber do not need to use our imaginations to know what that means—we have seen it at first hand in our constituencies, as my hon. Friend has just identified.

About 5.7 million homes and businesses in England are at risk of flooding, and more than half of the best, most fertile farmland in Britain is on flood plains. That is particularly relevant in the River Severn catchment, which crosses Shropshire. The River Severn Partnership—whose parliamentary caucus is ably chaired by my neighbour, the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), who I am pleased to see in his place—has formed to work with local authorities and MPs along the length of the catchment, and with the Environment Agency and others, to seek holistic solutions to adapt to those conditions and reduce flood risk.

Flood risk is a real and present danger. Latest estimates suggest that, by the end of this century, the River Severn will be 0.85 metres higher on average across the year and up to 1.5 metres higher during winter flood levels, although it is expected to be lower in summer, with 25% less water available for abstraction by as soon as 2050. In the past three years, we have already experienced three of the five worst floods ever recorded along the River Severn and, as yet, no climate allowance has been built into the considerable defences installed.

Regrettably, the River Severn catchment accounts for a disproportionate degree of flood events. In February 2022, 44 of the 80 flood warnings put out nationally were for the River Severn. Even when the catchment is not at the centre of storm events, we are often affected in Shropshire. Properties along the River Severn have been flooded twice in the past six months. In October, Storm Babet flooded 109 properties internally and 28 businesses, and in January, Storm Henk flooded 74 properties and 32 businesses. Those figures almost certainly understate the impact, as some people do not report to their local authority or insurer for fear of losing access to insurance in the future.

Putting in place the right preventive measures to reduce the risk of flooding is what the River Severn Partnership is all about, but that is a discussion for another day, unless my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham wants to intervene on that topic, given that I mentioned him.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

This is the first time in 19 years that someone has encouraged me to intervene on the, so I am very grateful. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend—my constituency neighbour—who has been one of the most active in the caucus of 37 MPs along the River Severn, which I chair, and I very much welcome his debate. Does he agree that it is essential that we work in collaboration with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to continue to lobby the Treasury on the £500 million business case we submitted to finally manage and maintain Britain’s longest river?

[Philip Dunne]

I am very pleased to have created a first in my hon. Friend’s parliamentary career, and I am sure it will not be the last. I invite him to apply for a Westminster Hall debate to discuss the work of the River Severn Partnership; I would be happy to support it. We did indeed submit proposals to the Treasury—in fact, to the Chancellor himself—on the River Severn Partnership bid for significant funding to look at a whole range of remediation and adaptation options upstream, going as far as the source of the River Severn in Wales.

This morning’s debate is about ensuring that the right support mechanisms are in place for those who have been affected by flooding. A range of measures offer financial and practical help, including schemes for householders, businesses and farmers. Some are of long standing, such as the Bellwin emergency relief scheme, and others were introduced more recently by the Conservative Government in 2017 through the flood recovery framework to provide more targeted support.

However, the support is a complex patchwork, as one glance at the House of Commons Library briefing for this debate shows: there are several elements of support, with different eligibility criteria, applicable to different entities that have suffered flood damage. Home and business support is primarily managed through local authorities under schemes for which the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has lead responsibility. They include the community recovery grant, council tax reductions, the business recovery grant and business rate reductions.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

In my constituency, flooding has been absolutely appalling for the past 18 months. As my right hon. Friend said, the level of rainfall has been virtually double the average virtually every single month. I have the broads in my constituency, great swathes of which are still under water, and the water table is very high. That leads to multiple problems, including groundwater from the amount of rainfall and erosion. My right hon. Friend spoke about the patchwork nature of the schemes and the lack of co-ordination. What can be done to bring together the stakeholders—the water companies, the county councils, the internal drainage boards and the Environment Agency—so they work in a more co-ordinated fashion? At the moment, the response is often slow and there is a lack of funding, so there should be an overarching body that co-ordinates the response far better.

[Philip Dunne]

I am very grateful for that important intervention from my hon. Friend, who is a valued member of the Environmental Audit Committee. He is right to point out how complex it is to get to grips with the situation, given that different responsibilities fall in different places. I encourage him to consider the work being led by my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham in the River Severn catchment in creating a partnership involving all the local authorities in the area, the Environment Agency and the non-governmental organisations that have an interest in the issue, such as the Wildlife Trust and the various broad and fen groups, as well as the internal drainage boards, which have a vital role to play. In many cases, such groups find it hard to come together regularly; there may even be a role for an enterprising and experienced MP to provide some leadership in order to cut across some of those institutional boundaries. I commend that partnership model to my hon. Friend.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

On that point, I would like to ask my right hon. Friend for his views on one matter. Now that we are out of the European Union, we do not need, for the first time in my life, to comply with the common agricultural policy. That means that we can, for the first time, pay farmers and landowners to hold on to water. My right hon. Friend referred to how our friends and neighbours across the border in Wales will be pivotal in helping us to do that. I would like to put on record the fact that my right hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams), who is the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, has made very positive statements about that in his local newspaper. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is a huge opportunity to strengthen our Union between Wales and England?

[Philip Dunne]

My hon. Friend tempts me to conclude my speech before I get to the point about farmers and sustainable farming incentives. There are provisions in the existing support arrangements, post the CAP regime, which will allow for mechanisms to help reduce flood risk.

My hon. Friend referred to the cross-border challenge. He will know that, on the English side of the border, in Shropshire and Herefordshire, there is a developing partnership with the equivalent counties of Powys and Monmouthshire, on the Welsh side, to provide practical schemes to allow them to co-operate across borders, which has been a problem. As we know, the environment is a delegated matter, but the environment, as we also know, does not respect administrative boundaries. The situation is a bit of a nonsense, and the responsible bodies can grapple with it only by working together. That includes the Welsh Government and Welsh local authorities, as well as the UK Government and English local authorities. My hon. Friend is quite right to draw that issue out.

I was going on to talk about the support arrangements for farmers and about the internal drainage boards, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) referred to. Those support arrangements are managed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Measures include the welcome introduction of a farming recovery fund, as a swift response to Storm Henk, with its eligibility criteria recently and pragmatically extended.

I should put on record my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a partner in a farming business. I am particularly pleased that the Minister for Water and Rural Growth is here to listen and respond to the debate. I know he cares deeply about water management issues, and has throughout his time in Parliament. I hope to suggest some pointers to him regarding the challenges facing farmers with flooded land.

I have just mentioned my entry in the register, and my farm is on the Herefordshire-Shropshire border. Part of it is within the Severn catchment and, as it is on the watershed, part of it is in the River Wye catchment. We have fields that, even this morning, in the middle of April, are still too wet to work. They have yet to dry out sufficiently, having effectively been waterlogged since last autumn. We did not have a specific flood event in the fields through either Babet or Henk, other than at the margins, but the water table has risen to such a level that we have not been able to get machinery on to some of our fields.

Before I turn to the specific farming measures that I would ask the Minister to look at, I would like to touch on the impact on properties, and particularly homes that have been flooded or are at material risk. Like many others in the House, I spent time earlier this year with homeowners, business owners and farmers in my constituency who had had their lives turned upside down by the impact of flooding. Some have been flooded more than once in the past year alone. I sympathise enormously with those who have had to deal with flooding, however it has affected them, having seen the damage and disruption it causes.

I visited one couple in Highley on the banks of the River Severn a couple of days after Storm Henk, who were still only able to access their home wearing waders, because flood waters had reached as high as the door handle on their back door. The heartbreaking devastation of that impact on their home was matched only by the anger and frustration of being told in the days that followed that they might not have been part of a sufficiently serious flood in their area to be able to access financial support, since fewer than 50 property owners had at that time come forward to report internal flooding of their properties across the local authority of Shropshire. That seems an arbitrary threshold. When visiting their premises, it was difficult to explain why the support mechanism did not apply to them, not least because it is at the discretion of the Secretary of State whether to invoke the mechanism at all.

The threshold is determined by local authority boundaries on a map rather than by the river system or catchment that has flooded, and it can take weeks or—as in the case of Storm Henk in Shropshire—months to establish whether the threshold has been reached, given the reluctance of some householders to report a flooding incident for fear of the impact on their subsequent insurability. Flood Re has significantly reduced but not eliminated that issue.

I appreciate that the eligibility criteria for the flood recovery framework is not the responsibility of my hon. Friend the Minister, but I urge him to impress on ministerial colleagues in DLUHC, as they undertake a review of the scheme this year, that they should consider how to improve access to the scheme to make it more fair. It is at present hard to comprehend why access can be denied to someone whose home or business is on the wrong side of the local authority boundary when, just upstream or downstream on the same river, properties affected by the same storm are awarded financial support.

As part of the review, I also urge Ministers to look at the per-property limits for support, as those are likely to leave people subject to multiple floods without further help once their property has reached the upper limit. If a property has changed hands between floods, the new owners might not be eligible for support even if their property has been flooded.

My second point concerns the administrative burden of implementing support under the flood recovery framework, which falls on local authorities. Everyone in this House is aware of the pressures that councils are already under, with limited resources for flood and water management. When a flood occurs, the community bands together incredibly quickly to support each other. I pay tribute to the efforts of local volunteers, flood action groups and local councillors who do so much to help when flood warnings are issued. Support from the local authority to help with prevention and then clean-up remains vital.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Member, the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, is making a great speech in a really important debate. On Boxing day 2015, we had the greatest flooding event in a century in Leeds on the River Aire catchment. All council members—I was a member of the council at the time—went to help the clean-up operation. Since then, the West Yorkshire flood risk partnership has created a new partnership between the local authority and local businesses. Local businesses are supporting, for instance, tree planting in the Upper Aire catchment and have been a full partner in the flood alleviation scheme on the River Aire. Such partnerships can help prevent future flooding and also come together when a flooding event happens to ensure domestic and business recovery.

[Philip Dunne]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend—I will call him my hon. Friend because we have worked together on the Environmental Audit Committee for some years—for making that point. He perhaps was not in the room when we talked about a similar partnership that exists in the River Severn catchment. He is absolutely right that when a flood event happens there is a sense of community spirit that comes together and acts—it is unfortunate that it should need to do so—as a mechanism to drive those who want to try to do something about it to form flood action groups, which have been a very successful community-led initiative across the country and are well supported at a national level by the flood action group and the Environment Agency. Those are good examples. My hon Friend the Member for North Norfolk referenced what should happen in Norfolk; he might like to look at the York experience as well.

On the burden on local authorities, Shropshire Council has one and a half full-time equivalent members of staff to deal with flooding issues and they do a great job. But asking them to take on the additional work of helping more than 50 households deal with the impact of flooding, and the significant work needed to act quickly to remedy flood damage or prevent recurrence, places a considerable burden on the team. That inevitably takes immediate priority over their long-term work to create lasting flood prevention schemes in their locality. They cannot do both tasks at once. I therefore urge the Minister to look at including provision within the flood recovery framework to award a revenue funding amount—perhaps as little as £50,000 to £100,000 per managing entity, which at the moment would be the local authority —to enable it to recruit suitable resource to help staff the activation and deployment of funds under the scheme, so that this time-critical support can be provided to those who properly need it.

I turn to flooded farms, for which the Minister does have some responsibility. The farming recovery fund has been a useful means of support to farmers in those counties declared eligible, but, as the Minister knows, that does not apply to Shropshire, despite it being in the same river catchment as Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, which are eligible.

I must tell the Minister that in a meeting with farmers and National Farmers Union representatives in south Shropshire last week, it was made clear to me that many farmers in Shropshire were affected by Storm Henk, and many more have been affected by the volume and duration of rainfall we have had since Storm Babet last October, yet they remain ineligible for the farming recovery fund. That is hard to fathom given that there are waterlogged farms across the county. I appreciate that the scheme applies to all land parcels that are flooded contiguous to a river that had notably high river level gauge readings during the 10 days following Storm Henk in January, provided that they registered under the rural payments service.

Payments of between £500 and £25,000 will have been a much-needed lifeline after the impact of the storm, compounded by the wettest March in over 40 years. Many colleagues raised similar concerns about the initially narrow scope of the support for farmers affected by flooding, and I commend the Minister for acting quickly to remove the limit—land had to be 150 metres from the centre of eligible rivers—so that all land flooded was covered as long as it was contiguous to an eligible river, as the NFU and others had called for.

I hope that today the Minister will be able to address whether further steps can be made and whether he would be prepared, in parallel to DLUHC’s review of its flood support measures, to encourage DEFRA officials to undertake a review of the criteria for support for farming businesses, so that badly affected counties, including Shropshire, will not miss out in future.

I encourage the Minister to speak to officials and ask them to take a holistic approach to the way in which farmers are encouraged through the sustainable farming incentive, as touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham, to undertake work to alleviate flood risk downstream; I am thinking of the various measures to slow the flow in upland areas to create wetlands and the like. Yet when land becomes flooded from major events or waterlogged through persistent rain so that it is less usable to grow food, the support mechanism may not be there to access.

I also hope the Minister might listen to calls from the NFU and others to change the way in which farming support becomes available. For example, there is some confusion during exceptionally wet weather, when many acres of farmland may be flooded without 50 properties suffering the same fate, whether farmers apply through the flood recovery framework if their home or business premises are flooded or the farming recovery fund if the impact is on flood water on farmland. Are they, or should they, be eligible for both schemes? Because the scheme is new, it is not crystal clear where they should go. Providing a means of aligning the different schemes or understanding in what circumstances which scheme applies would be extremely helpful to everybody.

Given the recent wet weather and, as I have explained, that the water table rises, farmland can flood in the absence of significant named storms. I ask the Minister whether his Department would review, alongside the review undertaken by DLUHC, the workings of the flood support schemes that apply to flooded farmland.

There has rightly been a refocus on food security recently, given the threats we face in a volatile world. I know my farm will have lower yields this year as a result of the planting conditions this winter. I suspect the same will apply in many areas of the country. We will therefore see either a reduction in available home produce or an increase in prices—or both. That will be in large part down to the impact of weather conditions, for which I can readily see the Minister is not responsible. Finding mechanisms, however, to ensure that farmers are there to plant next year and are there for future years to produce the food on which we all rely is really important. I urge the Minister to take the opportunity to support farmers in these challenging times, just as we ask our farmers to support our country in times of uncertainty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Dunne]

I am encouraged by the Minister’s closing remarks. Before I address them, I thank all Members who took part in the debate, including those who intervened and have since left. I particularly welcome my good friend, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey), making his inaugural speech from the Back Benches following his period as a Defence Minister. It is good to see him here.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord), my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) and the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) referred to the lack of fairness that results from the way the thresholds and criteria are implemented. I am pleased that that was picked up by the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), and specifically the Minister, who mentioned the review that is being done. What he said in his concluding remarks about the “alternative geographical boundaries” and looking at the level of the threshold was helpful. I will not repeat the spat across the Chamber about who said what to whom, but the fact that it is being reviewed is very welcome. The staffing allowances being offered to local authorities that undertake the work will also be helpful.

I should mention the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who gave a compelling account of the problems that have been occurring in York. I particularly welcome her welcoming the defence measures that have made York a safer place to live.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Food Security

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of food security, including the effects on it of environmental change and of insect decline.

I start by thanking the Liaison Committee and the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate on food security, as covered in recent reports by the Environmental Audit Committee, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, and the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, chaired respectively by myself and my right hon. Friends the Members for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) and for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark). I look forward to their contributions.

Food security affects us all. We all want enough food to feed ourselves and our families. I declare a particular interest in this area as a food producer myself, having held responsibility for my family farm for over 30 years. Our reports are, we hope, in the broadest sense complementary, in that each Committee recognises threats to the country’s food security and makes recommendations to Government on how to mitigate those threats. It may be hard to imagine the UK not having access to enough food to feed our population, but the truth is that British people have already felt the effects of climate change on our plates. Cold snaps and floods in Spain and Morocco were partly to blame for empty salad shelves in our supermarkets last year. We know that extreme weather events both at home and abroad are likely to become more frequent. Cost of living pressures mean that there are households in this country for which insecure access to food is already a daily reality. I commend colleagues on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for their work on household food security.

In the Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry, we looked at how to keep Britons fed in the face of environmental change. What we found is that food production and environmental change are—not to put too fine a point on it—mutually destructive. Climate change and biodiversity loss threaten to undermine not just food production itself, but the whole food system. Colleagues on the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee have drawn attention to a particular aspect of this relationship in their recent report on insect decline and UK food security.

Our global food system is itself one of the biggest drivers of environmental change, contributing to those very factors that undermine food security. In our inquiry, we heard that British farming is responsible for only 0.5% of the UK’s gross domestic product, but 12% of our greenhouse gas emissions. Globally, the food system is responsible for 30% of carbon emissions, but 50% of biodiversity loss.

We framed our findings around three pillars. First, we need to adapt our food and farming system to become more resilient to the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss. Secondly, we must mitigate the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss on our food system. Thirdly, we must mitigate the damage to the environment that some aspects of our food system may cause.

According to the latest annual statistics of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the UK produced 58% of its own food in 2022 and imported the remaining 42%. My Committee took the view that prioritising, sustaining and improving our dependence on home-grown produce would be key to keeping Britain nourished while protecting the planet. That will be particularly important for foods that are vital for our health but where we currently rely on imports. For example, we currently import 84% of our fruit. We cannot rely on domestic produce alone and even if we did it, would not guarantee food security. We heard that an exclusive focus on producing food here would make us more vulnerable, not less, to extreme weather events such as heatwaves, which are becoming more common not just in other countries, but here in the UK. Food produced here is dependent on the wider global food system. British food still relies on imported fertiliser, pesticide and animal feed.

We know all too well that the global food system does not exist in a vacuum. Health crises, such as the covid pandemic or avian flu; geopolitical crises, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the world’s breadbasket; and global supply pinch points, such as the blockage in the Suez canal all affect supply chains, prices and protectionism, and compound the effects of environmental change. We have seen all those things in the course of this Parliament.

When food insecurity is exacerbated by environmental change it can lead to conflict, with devastating consequences. Incidentally, that is why our Committee has just this week launched a new inquiry into the effects of climate change and wider security issues, and I encourage anybody who is interested, including those interested in the impact on food security, to submit evidence by the end of April.

Today, we have published the Government’s response to our report on environmental change and food security, and I wish to thank the Minister and his officials who have engaged with our report. There is much in the response that we welcome, and I would like to focus my remarks this afternoon on some of the responses to the issues that the Committee highlighted in our report.

Under the Agriculture Act 2020, the Government are required to produce a food security assessment every three years. Although that is welcome, in view of the growing risk of volatility of food supplies, we urge the Government in our report to move to an annual publication of its food security report, with which colleagues on the EFRA Committee agree. I welcome the Prime Minister’s recent announcement that the Government will introduce an annual food security index and encourage them to find parliamentary time to put this on to a statutory footing at the earliest opportunity.

We found that one of the easiest wins in shoring up UK food self-sufficiency and mitigating the environmental impacts of our food system is to prevent the food that we have produced from going to waste, so I also welcome the £15 million that the Prime Minister recently announced to stop farm food going to waste. I would appreciate it if the Minister confirmed whether he agrees that the Government’s strategy for preventing food and drink waste, as outlined in their waste prevention programme for England, would be greatly enhanced if it included some targets and timescales for reducing food waste, as was recommended by my Committee.

In response to our report, the Secretary of State committed to taking a decision in the next four to six months on compulsory food waste reporting by businesses. I encourage him to do so before Dissolution. I also encourage the Minister to look at accelerating the regulation of insects as a high-protein source—something that has now been approved by the EU. Insects can be reared on organic waste streams, including food waste, to create a domestic alternative to soy imports for animal feed. It is potentially a tremendous way to have an impact in this area by reducing the millions of tonnes of soy imported for animal feed from countries at risk of deforestation, for example.

One of the key ingredients for food security is healthy soils, which face degradation from increasing droughts, flooding and more intense rainfall brought about by climate change. I welcome the new Government commitment to publish a progress report on the development of a soil health indicator by June. Ensuring that farmers have access to clear information to help to measure the health of their soils, which is a fascinatingly complex subject, is incredibly important, so I am pleased that the Government accepted our recommendation to publish guidance for farmers on soil monitoring. I believe that today the EFRA Committee is publishing the Government response to its report on soil health, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby might refer to in his remarks.

The other key ingredient is water, so I am particularly pleased that the Minister for water is responding to the debate. Food producers need enough of it, and they need it to be clean. My Committee recommended that the Government look holistically at managing water demand so that farmers have enough water in the right place at the right time to be able to feed the nation.

The Government’s commitment to consider more robust water efficiency standards is welcome as a demand control measure, as is their commitment to a third round of the water management grant later this year. We pointed out that the scheme will benefit only a small proportion of farmers in England. Will the Minister state what proportion of farmers he expects to benefit from the water management grant, specifically for establishing on-farm reservoirs and for precision irrigation technology to help British farming to become more water-efficient and better prepared for hotter, drier summers?

Turning briefly to consumption, what we choose to eat can have a big impact on the planet, which clearly affects our future food security. The choices that we make now will affect how much choice we have in the future. In response to our report, the Government pointed to Public Health England’s guidance, the Eatwell Guide, stating:

“Given that most people in the UK do not currently follow a diet in line with government dietary recommendations, improvements in population dietary intakes in line with the Eatwell Guide would go a significant way to meeting sustainability targets.”

All very laudable stuff. What will the Government do to encourage more people to follow this beneficial guidance? Surely if it is well-evidenced advice, the Government should be making more of it.

One landmark piece of work that we are still waiting for is the Government’s land use framework. Time and again, we heard in our inquiry that optimising the way English land is used for all the many demands required of it is the central issue to maintaining food security in a changing environment. When he gave evidence last July, the Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries promised us that the land use framework, already delayed, would be published by the end of 2023. Sadly, the Government are now telling my Committee that it will be published in 2024. Will the Minister update the House on when in 2024 we can expect the land use framework to be published? Will he undertake, as my Committee recommended, to publish the Government’s methodologies alongside the land use framework when it eventually appears, to give confidence that the framework will contribute both to maintaining food security and to the Government’s net zero and biodiversity targets?

The other hugely relevant innovation brought in by the Government are the environmental land management schemes, or ELMS. The Government described those schemes as being founded on the principle of public money for public goods, but Ministers have declined our reasonable invitation to designate food security as a public good—as the Minister will be aware, the NFU has been calling for that for some time. Will the Minister explain why?

I did not come here today to be all doom and gloom. The environmental challenges facing our food system are worrying, but they are also an opportunity for the best of technological innovation. Our Committee has been keen to examine over this Parliament how technology can help us to address to environmental and climate changes that we face. Modern technology—be it the use of artificial intelligence and drones to pinpoint the use of fertiliser, the use or methane-suppressing food additives, or alternative proteins such as insects, now mostly grown in labs—opens up new ways of producing food while minimising the environmental impact. I am sure that we will hear a lot about that from my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells.

In response to our recommendations on expanding the incentives for farmers to take technological innovations, the Government increased the farming equipment and technology grant to a maximum of £50,000 per farm, and increased its overall budget to £70 million, which I welcome.

The fact that three Select Committees are here to represent recent reports on different aspects of food security shows how important the subject is. We are not alone: the International Development Committee is in the middle on an inquiry on hunger and nutrition. I thank the Liaison Committee for granting time for the debate, and I thank the Government for their response to the Environmental Audit Committee report on environmental change and food security. I commend the report to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

It is a privilege and honour to speak in this very important debate.

Food security is part of national security. It is a vital issue. The fact that three major Select Committees tabled this debate to the Liaison Committee shows its importance for our country. I am very proud to represent a constituency with a large farming footprint, both as the Member of Parliament and as a proud member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

I pay tribute first to our fantastic farmers and growers up and down the land who produce the highest-quality food to the highest production standards and look after the precious environment, and to the bodies, such as the National Farmers Union, that champion the sector. Producing food and looking after the environment can and should go hand in hand, and our UK farmers are the best in the world in that regard.

Our Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee looked at this issue directly in producing our report “Food security”, and it has examined other aspects in studies including our ongoing study entitled “Fairness in the food supply chain” and previous inquiries such as “Moving animals across borders”, “Labour in the food supply chain”, “COVID-19 and food supply”, and “Soil health”, which was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill), who chairs the Committee.

The challenges to our farmers and growers are huge. The importance of how we produce our food has been brought into sharp relief first during the pandemic, and now with the war in Ukraine. In Britain we have seen our excellent farmers and growers battle through this geopolitical context, dealing with factors such as extreme weather events, whether they involve a lack of water or flooding, and showing real tenacity in delivering for our country.

We all remember the startling headlines and the shortages on our shelves at the beginning of the pandemic. The concept of key workers was very much in our minds at that time. First and foremost we thought of NHS workers, but we also thought of the importance of all those involved in the food supply chain—farmers, growers, vets, drivers and abattoir workers. They were classified as key workers, and it is important to remember that.

The tragic illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia has again brought this issue into sharp focus. Again our producers face mounting challenges: increased fuel and energy costs, increased animal feed costs and increased fertiliser costs, as well as a lack of supply of fertiliser. Bolstering our food security is an urgent task, given inflation costs and the challenges around the world such as the war in Ukraine. We must think hard about becoming more self-sufficient. We produce about 60% of what we consume, and I firmly believe that we need to produce more.

Fertiliser became an important issue as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Select Committee took a close interest in that, suggesting that the UK needed to be more resilient. The fertiliser company CF Fertilisers UK has mothballed its Ince plant and ended ammonia production in its Billingham plant. A by-product of fertiliser production and ammonia production is carbon dioxide, which, as we know, is vital for our food and beverage industry, but which is also vital to the process of slaughtering pigs and poultry. I strongly believe that the Government need to keep a watching brief on how we can secure a resilient supply of fertiliser and carbon dioxide.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) mentioned, biosecurity is pivotal to food security, and it is also pivotal to national security. As a veterinary surgeon, I have seen how crucial it is, and not just for our nation but for our world. I started my journey into politics as a veterinary surgeon on the frontline, witnessing and supervising the culls during the foot and mouth crisis of 2001, and I saw sights then that I never want to see again in my lifetime.

As we have heard, African swine fever is advancing upwards through the continent of Europe. It is yet to reach the UK, and I pray that it never does, but if it does it will be catastrophic for our country—catastrophic for our animal health in terms of the pig sector, but also for human mental health. Another major inquiry undertaken by our Committee, entitled “Rural mental health”, examined the challenges and pressures faced by people working in rural communities and the food production chains, such as animal disease outbreaks, extreme weather events and rural isolation. In the event of a catastrophic animal health outbreak such as swine fever, the mental health implications for people across the country would be devastating.

I pay tribute to the Government and the Animal and Plant Health Agency. We are facing many threats, including, as I have said, African swine fever, but there are also ongoing threats such as avian influenza, which is still bubbling away. I know that Ministers and officials are currently very exercised by the threat from the bluetongue virus; we have seen cases in Kent, Suffolk, Norfolk and Surrey, and when the Culicoides midge season arrives we will be under real threat. There are also ongoing, chronic threats from diseases such as bovine tuberculosis.

[Philip Dunne]

I hesitate to intervene on my hon. Friend, but he has just referred to TB and the mental health implications of animal health crises for our farmers. I would like to mention to the House that, on my own farm, we have just gone down with TB for the second time in six months. We have had 13 cows in calf—some have just calved, and some are about to calf—that were reactors. We do not yet know whether they were positive or were just reactors—in other words, whether they received false positives.

There was confusion between DEFRA and the vets about whether those animals could be taken to the slaughterhouse or had to be shot on farm. DEFRA was telling us that they had to go to the slaughterhouse. It turned out that had we done that, we would have been in breach of the law, because one cannot take an animal to a slaughterhouse within a month of its giving birth. Consequently, the animals had to be shot on farm, including calves and pregnant cows on the brink of giving birth. The mental health impact on the farmers who have to look after those animals is very significant. At this time of the year, this terrible disease affects many people.

[Dr Hudson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that powerful testimony. In the EFRA Committee’s rural mental health inquiry, we took similarly powerful evidence on the implications of TB when there is an outbreak, but also when farmers are involved in testing. There are implications for vets and farmers while they are waiting for the results to come through, and from what happens when there are positive results, so I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention.

The APHA is part of our frontline in protecting our biosecurity. It has its headquarters in Weybridge, Surrey, and the EFRA Committee visited the institution, which needs a radical refurbishment and redevelopment. The Government are committed to that, but I urge them to press ahead at full steam. It requires a lot of money— £2.8 billion. Some £1.2 billion has been allocated so far, but the EFRA Committee took evidence from the chief veterinary officer, who pressed the case for how important it is that the APHA is redeveloped. I hope that the Minister takes that message away. I know that DEFRA is on the same page and is making the case to the Treasury that we need to spend a fair amount of money now to prevent a future crisis.

We have talked today about some of the international challenges that our farmers and growers have faced, not least the ongoing situations in Ukraine and the middle east. As we have heard, Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe. It is important for supplies of grain and sunflower, but also fertiliser. What we have seen throughout that crisis is a choking of supply through the Black sea, and the deliberate and cynical decision by Putin to pull Russia out of the UN’s Black sea grain initiative, leading to its subsequent collapse. That has choked off supplies to the rest of the world. What we have seen as a consequence—I am sure this is intended by Putin—are food shortages and potential famine in the developing world. As a country, we need to be cognisant of that. It is so important that the Black sea route gets back up to speed.

The actions of the Houthis in the Red sea have affected trade and the free passage of vessels, which has implications for the security of shipping and trade routes. Costs have increased due to diversions around the Cape of Good Hope, adding an extra 14 days to journeys and sometimes upwards of an extra £1 million for a vessel’s voyage. That will have unintended consequences for the price and availability of food and other supplies. Securing the passage of goods throughout the world is part of global security, and we need to think about the Black sea, the Red sea, the Panama canal and the Suez canal to make sure that such routes are viable.

Amid all these challenges, I am proud that our Government are supporting the sector. We have a Prime Minister, a Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and a Government who are fully aware of the issues and challenges facing our farmers and growers, and I know the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore), personally feels it too.

I was pleased to attend the Prime Minister’s Farm to Fork summit. Food production and food security being brought into the heart of No. 10 is an important statement to the country. It is important that we are maintaining the farming budget for England at £2.4 billion a year through this Parliament and, coming into this election year, we need clarity that that level of funding will continue. Farmers and growers need to be able to plan, so we need to have security.

Our horticulture and agriculture have been bolstered by additional visas, allowing people to come in to harvest crops. That has been expanded to the poultry sector, but we need to keep a watching brief. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) talked about animals being put down on farms. In the pig sector, where we have had labour shortages in the abattoir and processing sectors over the past couple of years, upwards of 60,000 healthy pigs were culled on farms. That is awful food wastage, but it is also harrowing and incredibly distressing for the people who reared those pigs. We need to keep a watching brief so that those situations never happen again.

Our Committee and the EAC have called for food security to be reviewed annually. I am pleased that the Government have announced an annual food security index that will underpin the food security report, which is an important statement. The last food security report was in December 2021, prior to the Ukraine war. We need annual check-ups, and I am pleased that the Government have responded to the Select Committees’ reports.

The Government are also very aware that good farming and food production and a healthy environment go hand in hand, and that the ELM scheme is pivotal in supporting both those goals. I am pleased that the Secretary of State has announced an expansion of ELMS in recent months.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) mentioned the situation in Wales. If that is going to be Labour’s blueprint for England, there is a real concern that 10% of food-producing land will be diverted to planting trees and that another 10% will be diverted to wildlife habitats. That is a noble intention, but the idea of forcing farmers to take 20% of their food-producing land out of production is deeply alarming. We have talked about TB policy, and the statistics for cattle herds in Wales and England show that the TB situation is worse in Wales. We need to be cognisant and follow the science. We need evidence-based policymaking to control the dreadful threat of bovine TB.

I congratulate the Government on their important Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023. The Act, which some of the reports touch on, allows the technology to produce climate-resistant and disease-resistant crops, as well as disease-resistant animals and birds, which will reduce the need for drugs and antimicrobials and will indirectly help public health. It will help animal health, bird health and public health, and it will support the environment. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee visited the world-leading Rothamsted Research to look at its work.

I support the Government’s animal health and welfare pathway, their legislation to ban the live export of animals for fattening and slaughter, and their £4 million fund for small abattoirs. Those measures will help animals to be produced, reared, slaughtered and ultimately consumed locally, which is a win for local communities and for animal welfare, because animals will not have to be transported long distances. We have the highest animal welfare standards in the world, and we can be a beacon to the rest of the world in our policymaking. I am proud that our Conservative Government have done that.

The Government paused their trade negotiations with Canada, which was an important symbolic statement. They said, “No, we have red lines on hormone-treated beef, ractopamine-treated pork and chlorine-washed products. These are red-line products that are illegal in this country, and we will not import them.” I congratulate the Government on standing firm, because that says to the world, “This is where we stand and these are our values. If you want to trade with us, meet our standards.”

We cannot shy away from the need to do more to bolster our food security, domestic production and standards. The environmental land management schemes are good measures. We must ensure that all types of farmer are fairly rewarded, including commoners, tenants and upland farmers. Our Committee has looked at the issue and we have been calling for that. We also need to make sure that we are training up the next generation of people to go into farming by supporting our land-based educational sector. My colleagues have talked about food waste and we need to tackle that. We also need to think about fairness in the food supply chain, which our Select Committee is very much looking at.

In conclusion, I pay tribute to all our farmers, growers and producers, and everyone else involved in producing food in our country. Doing that and looking after the environment go hand in hand. We are a beacon to the world in our production standards. This area is vital for our communities and it is so important that our Government continue to support it, and I commend our reports to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Dunne]

I am grateful to the Minister and all who have spoken for their warm words about the work of my right hon. Friends the Members for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) and for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) from the other Select Committees, and the work that all members of Select Committees put into these reports. I share the Minister’s concern that not a single Back Bencher from any Opposition party contributed to this debate. All the contributions came from those on the Government Benches, but I welcome the remarks made by the Opposition spokesmen, the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar) and the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who both seem to take food security seriously. We will have to see how that is converted into any action.

On the subject on action, I was relieved that the Minister sought to introduce some new definitions to parliamentary terminology. I have not heard a Minister use the expression “imminently” before. The expressions “soon”, “in the spring” and “when parliamentary time allows” are well recognised expressions for general delay and obfuscation, but I hope that “imminently” brings a new urgency. He also referred to his officials working “at pace”, so we look forward to that.

I conclude by congratulating and thanking Conservative Back Benchers for their contributions, in particular my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), who, as a former Secretary of State, brings particular expertise to her contributions. She pointed out that we should not be looking to Wales as a blueprint for future food security, given the devastating impact that the proposals of the Welsh Government are having on farm incomes and food production. My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) spoke about the importance of the effective border controls for phytosanitary requirements, as we rely on both imports and exports for food businesses and food security in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) brought his considerable expertise in animal health to the deliberations. I rather apologise for having personalised my intervention, but he is able to speak with considerable authority on the challenges of animal health. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) was referring to the challenges of waste in the food supply chain. She made important comments on that, which I hope we will see turn into action with the waste food report, whether that is “imminent”, “soon” or “in the spring”. Again, I thank all Members for participating in this debate.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I shall put the question imminently, or indeed shortly, if not now.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of food security, including the effects on it of environmental change and of insect decline.

Dogs (Protection of Livestock) (Amendment) Bill

Philip Dunne Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 2nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) on her perseverance in not only presenting this Bill, which I know she was interested in when she was Secretary of State, but managing to get here and deliver her speech today despite her affliction. I will speak very briefly. I should declare my entry in the register as a farmer, including of livestock, and my interest as a dog owner. One of my dogs has had occasion to chase deer—they are not categorised as livestock, I do not think, in the Bill—in woods, which can be a cause of considerable distress when she does not return despite our entreaties.

I rise on behalf of farmers across the country, but in particular in my constituency in Shropshire, where a quarter of all sheep across the UK are produced from within an hour of Craven Arms, in the centre of my constituency. There are a great many livestock farmers, and sheep producers in particular, along the Welsh borders, as the House will appreciate. This measure is in considerable part directed at helping those farmers with these unfortunate incidents. A survey of NFU Mutual members—that is the insurance arm of the National Farmers Union, of which I am a member; it is my insurer—estimates that the cost of dog attacks on farm animals was £1.8 million in 2022.

This is a real and present issue for livestock farmers, in particular in spring—the time of year we are about to enter—when sheep are lambing or on the point of lambing. If pregnant ewes are chased, it can lead to the abortion and loss of the lamb they have carried for months. It can impact not only on farm incomes, but on the health and wellbeing of the livestock managers themselves if they have to deal with dangerous dogs causing trouble to their livestock.

If the Bill proceeds to Committee, I hope that some consideration will be given to the requirement to keep dogs on a lead not just in open fields but on open common land. There are many commons along the Welsh borders in my constituency, most of which are grazed by sheep. It is important that, if sheep are present, people keep their dogs on a lead on a common, which is not the normal practice in many of the commons that I visit locally. That might need to be looked at in Committee. I am conscious that this will be a short debate, so I will conclude by assuring the Minister that the Bill has my support.

Storm Henk

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Robbie Moore]

Let me pick up on the shadow spokesperson’s points about Cobra. I am absolutely right in saying that the Government held a Cobra unit Cabinet Office meeting last Tuesday to promote cross-sector preparedness action, way in advance of Storm Henk taking place, and cross-Government meetings, chaired by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as the lead Government Department for flooding, were held on many occasions last week and throughout the weekend. There has been daily contact between DEFRA and resilience partners across the Government, including the Cabinet Office and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and local resilience forums also had preparedness meetings and were prepared to convene strategic co-ordination groups to manage the local response. I know from my own visits last week and over the weekend just how quickly and efficiently the support has been rolling out.

I confirm to the House that since 2010 we have invested £6 billion to better protect 600,000 properties against flooding and coastal erosion. We are on track to spend £5.2 billion on flood defence schemes in the next six-year period—that is double the £2.6 billion previously allocated and it is better protecting more homes. Over the period of Storm Henk, 75,000 homes were better protected as a result of this Government’s infrastructure and the investment that we have put in place.

The Opposition refer to planting trees, but this Government go further. We recognise that planting trees is one part—a single part—of the solution, but we are going much further by doubling the amount of investment from £2.6 billion to £5.2 billion over the next spending review period. That includes £100 million to support communities that have experienced repeated flooding. The first 53 projects that are set to benefit were announced last April. Over the period of Storm Henk, we have seen the benefits of the work we did in 2022 to better protect Burton upon Trent, which had the highest water levels with the River Trent peaking. That is where our investment is working.

We are also taking swift action by rolling out the flood recovery fund, which will better protect households, businesses and farmers. That was announced this weekend and the eight chief executives of the local authorities it will benefit have already been written to.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister and his colleagues on their prompt action and the very responsive way in which they have handled inquiries from MPs throughout the House whose constituencies have been affected.

The Minister did not mention Shropshire when he referred to those counties that have been eligible for the flood recovery framework. I assure him that the banks of the River Severn, which I know he visited in Shrewsbury around Christmas, flooded between Shrewsbury and Bewdley. Only on Friday I visited a household near Highley station in my constituency that had water up to the door handles across the ground floor. A significant number of properties are affected and I hope the Minister will consider the representations from Shropshire Council when they come through.

[Robbie Moore]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Before Christmas, I visited Shrewsbury to see for myself the positive impacts that flood defences are having and to speak to Environment Agency representatives. I am well aware of and look forward meeting the caucus of 38 MPs who represent constituencies right across the River Severn channel. I reassure my right hon. Friend that I, my officials and the whole Department are in close contact with the Environment Agency. We are monitoring the situation closely. If we get to a situation where we need to expand the flood recovery fund even further, we will not hesitate to do so.

Water Industry: Financial Resilience

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

It has to be remembered that privatisation occurred in 1989. We have had a succession of different Governments during that time, and it has been this Government who have accelerated clamping down on water companies and opening up transparency. The hon. Lady asks what Ofwat has done, and I will name just a few things. Since 2020, Ofwat has updated the licences so that if a water company loses its investment credit rating, it is barred from making payouts to shareholders. In July 2022, it set out additional proposals to increase financial resilience, including companies having a stronger credit rating. In March, it announced that it would take enforcement actions against water companies that do not link dividend payments to performance. We have done more than any Government before to ensure that we have a fully functioning, strong regulator.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

On financial resilience, has the Minister taken the opportunity to consider the hotchpotch of policies coming from Opposition Front Benchers on the subject? Under their prescription, they would seek to take all the profit of water companies to invest in capital expenditure. That would undermine the financial resilience of those companies that rely on private capital for investment in tackling this problem. In the one part of the country where Labour does have responsibility—Wales—has she noticed that the sewerage overflows are almost double the rate per overflow pipe as in England?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my right hon. Friend for pointing that out; I cannot support more strongly what he said. We have a private system, and Ofwat says that it is financially resilient. We need investment in these companies to make them function properly. Obviously, we need to hold the companies to account, but we need to see enormous investment. Everything in the Government’s plan for water, including the storm overflow discharge reduction plan, is fully costed. We are not pulling the wool over people's eyes; we are telling them clearly what this will mean and how it will deliver the water services that we need.

Animal Welfare (Kept Animals)

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

That begs the question of why on earth the Government are so bashful about bringing forward new powers and freedoms as a result of us leaving the European Union. Surely we should be embracing them—bringing them forward for the benefit of our much-loved animals—but they have not done so, even on an issue that is not controversial across the House. I assume and hope that there is support to end puppy smuggling and stop the export of animals that we care about. I will come on to that later, but I am afraid that it is a missed opportunity, despite Government Members’ comments.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jim McMahon]

I will make a bit of progress first, if that is okay. In the end, it is those promises that—if we are not careful and they are not kept—undermine the very foundation of our democracy. Let us be clear: at the last general election, every single Conservative MP stood on the platform of a pledge to voters that they would deliver the priorities subsequently set out in the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill. It was a key part of their 2019 manifesto.

What has happened since 2019? Well, a fair bit. First, we have witnessed a Prime Minister who did not survive a lockdown party, or at least his catalogue of lies that followed it. We had a second one who did not even survive a lettuce and a third one who will be lucky to survive the post-election fallout, but, regardless of leaders, a manifesto stood on by every single Conservative Member should stand the test of time. The former Prime Minister who has left the House in disgrace promised the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill but, like much else, he failed to deliver. According to members of her own party, the next Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss)—who left Downing Street in disgrace and undercut our animal welfare protections in her botched trade deals—wanted to ditch the Bill, not just failing to deliver that promise but actively selling us out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim McMahon]

To be absolutely clear, this is not the Labour party framing our own motion and own draft Bill, and bringing it to the House and trying to bounce the Conservative Government. This is a Government manifesto commitment and a Government Bill—word for word, sentence by sentence. There is nothing to disagree with. Let us be clear as well that it passed on Second Reading. It is not as though we are starting from scratch; it passed on Second Reading unanimously with support from Members on all sides of the House.

[Philip Dunne]

First, the hon. Gentleman has told us that we have been brought kicking and screaming to this place. This is an Opposition day debate. It is his choice as to what he puts up as the subject for this debate. Secondly, he has not responded to the point of order, which he could have done to settle the issue, made by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson). [Interruption.] I know it is not his place to do so, but he could have made it clear in his opening remarks that he has not published a Bill, which is normally the case when someone puts forward a motion such as this. Without any explanatory notes, we do not know what he is talking about.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. I dealt with that issue very clearly indeed and the Speaker has ruled that the debate taking place today is orderly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

What can I say? Rubbish. The quota for British fishermen, including Scottish fishermen, has gone up since we left the European Union. We have signed new trade deals, the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership being the latest. We have announced an extra five agricultural attachés around the world, making 16 in total, who will promote great British food, including fish, around the world.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

5. What steps her Department is taking to support bathing waters.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

There are now 424 designated bathing sites. Four new sites have been added this year, including two in Rutland Water, one in Plymouth and one in my own constituency, on the River Deben, near Waldringfield. That is the highest number of bathing water sites we have ever had.

My right hon. Friend will be aware that bathing water sites are designated on the basis of how many people bathe there rather than water quality. However, thanks to targeted regulation and investment of £2.5 billion, we have made excellent progress in improving bathing water quality at existing sites, such that 93% of bathing waters were classified as good or excellent last year, up from just over 70% in 2010.

[Philip Dunne]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her answer. She will be aware that last week, Water UK announced that water companies will support applications for 100 sites on inland waterways to achieve the bathing water standard. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that the Environment Agency is resourced to facilitate monitoring of those sites on their journey to achieve that important designation of clean water in our rivers?

[Dr Coffey]

I assure my right hon. Friend that the Environment Agency will do the monitoring that is expected for all designated bathing water sites. I welcome what the water companies said last week—both their apology and their proposal to support more inland waterways to achieve the bathing water designation. However, let us be clear: the money announced by the water companies was what we were expecting, to comply with the storm overflows discharge reduction plan that we have already set in place. We will continue to ensure that the regulations promote bathing water sites, but the ultimate benefit of subsequent targeting and interventions will be improved water quality.

Water Quality: Sewage Discharge

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans). I welcome what he said about trying to work cross-party to solve this problem. That is what I have been doing since this Parliament began. I do not want to dwell on the private Member’s Bill that I introduced over three years ago, but it is surprising that it has taken the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) three years to come up with his own private Member’s Bill. Having read it, it seems to me that he has not read the Environment Act 2021, introduced by this Government a year and a half ago. The Water Quality (Sewage Discharge) Bill is one of the weakest documents I have ever seen, and it was clearly concocted and manufactured purely for the purposes of this debate. As he said in his opening speech, the Bill was introduced to benefit Labour candidates in the next parliamentary election, whenever it comes, and in next month’s local elections. The political opportunism is shameful.

However, in the spirit of seeking to focus my remarks on something useful, I will dissect some of the specific errors in the Water Quality (Sewage Discharge) Bill. First, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, clause 1 talks about water quality monitoring requirements. Two years ago, the Environmental Audit Committee’s “Water quality in rivers” report specifically called for the improved monitoring of our waterways. We have heard that Lord Benyon, the Conservative rivers Minister at the time, introduced monitoring as a result, and we are nearly at 100%. We called for upstream and downstream monitoring of the impact of discharges into rivers, which is precisely what was included in the Environment Act. Clause 1 of the Bill seeks to accelerate the measure to bring it into effect from 1 October, which is completely unrealistic. We have not yet agreed the technical specifications to be able to test water for the four parameters, so there is no supply chain in place to do that. Hopeless.

Clause 2 of the Bill talks about adverse impacts and seeks to accelerate and define the progressive reduction of sewage discharges, which are also covered by the Environment Act, to try to prevent 90% of such discharges by 2030. The Secretary of State has said there is no clarity on how much that would cost, but we know that it could cost hundreds of billions of pounds, adding £1,000 to customers’ bills and diverting the entire construction industry to fix the problem. Over the next seven years, which hospitals and schools would not be built as a result of Labour’s proposal?

[Anthony Mangnall]

My right hon. Friend is making an extraordinarily important point about finding a balance between attracting investment and ensuring that work is delivered to address the problem. Can we go further in encouraging water companies to keep that balance in order?

[Philip Dunne]

I will come on to that in a moment, but my hon. Friend makes the valid point that there is not enough dividend income for the water companies to pay for the billions of pounds in the storm overflows discharge reduction plan, as the Labour party fancifully suggests. The companies cannot pass the whole bill on to customers, so they have to be able to go to the markets, which are actively looking to invest in green projects of this nature. The money is there, but it will only be delivered through the private sector.

Clause 3 of the Bill talks about financial penalties. Labour is calling for penalties for the use of storm overflows. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, this is a question of degree. We already have penalties, and it is the Conservatives who introduced the water restoration fund, on which we are currently consulting, so that the proceeds of any fines resulting from the 2,000 permit breaches that are currently being investigated by Ofwat and the Environment Agency, as a result of this Government’s direction, will make the polluter pay. That is happening. The Labour motion suggests that it could happen instantly, but that would put the entire water system in disarray. This is another completely unrealistic proposition.

The hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton is calling on the Government to produce a discharge strategy, so he clearly has not read the storm overflows discharge reduction plan that the Government published a year ago. He also calls for a legal obligation to consult Welsh Ministers. Frankly, we have just heard about the appalling performance of Welsh Water under this Welsh Government. For further clarity, the 83,000 spills in Wales represent almost 22% of the total number of spillages across England and Wales. The last time I looked, Wales represented about 5% of the UK population, not 22%. That is a hopeless example, and the last thing we should do is take advice from the Welsh Government.

Environmental Improvement Plan 2023

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

I thank the hon. Lady for that question. We commenced the legal duty on public authorities, at national and local government level, to consider biodiversity from 1 January, so that is already in place. The environmental principles policy statement was published yesterday. It will take some time for the Government to bring that in, and it will come into effect formally from 1 November this year.

My right hon. Friend the Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries went into considerable detail in the consideration of the decision about neonicotinoids. Every year, if an application is made, it has to be considered separately. From discussion with our chief scientific adviser, my understanding about what happened in that process—[Interruption.] That is not true. We increased the threshold for usage and we set a bar, to be decided by Rothamsted Research, for how much of the crop has to be at risk. Only when those thresholds are reached can the neonicotinoid be applied to the seed. That is further strengthened by a prohibition on the planting of flowering crops for, I think, 36 months—it may be 32 months, but certainly between two and three years—after the use of the pesticide. Very careful consideration has been given to the matter, and we continue to consider these applications with a great deal of care. I am conscious that with the sustainable farming initiative, for example, we have brought forward eligibility for integrated pest management grants so that we can continue to try to accelerate away from using pesticides routinely.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the incredible amount of work that the Secretary of State and her team, fresh into post, have put into the five-year environmental improvement plan. This is a holistic, comprehensive update of the 25-year environment plan, and it introduces for the first time a whole slew of targets and interim targets on the journey to where we wish to get to in the next 20 years.

Looking at goal 3 on clean and plentiful water, a topic that has been of great interest to Members across this House, I ask the Secretary of State to take this opportunity to help Opposition Members who seem to have deliberately confused what we voted for in this House in trying to introduce targets, particularly in connection with persistent chemicals. They are substances such as flame retardants that are banned from use, but that exist in sediment on our riverbeds and other places and are being released through the natural process of decay. This is not something that this House has voted to continue for 40 years, as some Opposition Members have tendentiously claimed.

[Dr Coffey]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that. He is absolutely right to say that a lot of effort has gone into this review. That is quite right, because nature matters so much, not just to those of us who have a passion for it, but because it is critical to the global web of life.

This is not the first time that Liberal Democrats have put stuff out and it has been a complete load of the proverbial. I will make a point to the House more broadly about the chemical status of water. In the last decade, while we were still a member of the European Union, we added a particular type of chemical—it includes elements such as mercury—to the list of those to be considered in assessing the chemical status of water bodies. Before that, nearly every one of our water bodies had good chemical status. When that provision came in, none of our water bodies had good status. Exactly the same thing happened to countries such as Germany. This is a natural process, and we now need nature to heal and recover before we can get that status changed.

On the other aspects that are more within our control, we have pressed the case through our strategic policy statements and things such as the water industry national environment programme. We are getting water companies to really tighten up and clean up waste water treatments.

Avian Influenza Outbreak

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) on securing the debate and everyone who has spoken to highlight not only the real and practical challenges the poultry industry is facing as a result of this incident, but the impact on our wild bird population.

I alert the Minister to an incident that happened in my constituency last week. Members of the public reported to me and, as they should have done, to Shropshire Council and the Environment Agency sightings of dead geese around the River Severn near the bridge in Bridgnorth. I immediately contacted Shropshire Council, which promptly sent an animal health officer to investigate. By the time the animal health officer had arrived, the birds in question were in the river and not on public land, as had been thought. They were therefore inaccessible to the animal health officer. The council contacted the APHA, which did not have a watercraft available to assist. There was therefore a delay. The next time there was an inspection, three days later, the birds had not surprisingly disappeared—it is a fast-flowing river.

There is a question over resourcing and the capacity in the EA’s workforce to respond to incidents. I appreciate that it is difficult to do this right across the country, but there is no doubt that this disease is becoming endemic in the wild bird population, in particular in migratory wildfowl, which can travel all over the country, as we have heard from hon. Members.

On the poultry industry, my constituency in south Shropshire has a significant number of poultry farmers of several types. I pay tribute to my constituent James Mottershead, who is present in the Public Gallery today. He is a poultry farmer and happens to be chairman of the National Farmers Union poultry board. He has been engaging well with the Minister’s officials in DEFRA, and I pay tribute to their efforts in trying to find a resolution.

I will mention a couple of challenges, building on what has been said by other hon. Members. On compensation, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon said, given the speed with which this disease can take hold in a shed that has become infected, it is simply no good to pay only for birds that remain alive, because the vast majority may have been killed by the disease before the approval was granted. We need to look at the compensation mechanism. One of the knock-on effects of having inadequate compensation for farmers is that the insurance has now been withdrawn because the insurer did not expect there to be a contribution towards the loss. That means that sheds will not be restocked in the event of an incident, even once biosecurity efforts have been completed, because insurance is not available. Even if it were to be available, the cost would be far too heavy. A more realistic compensation payment would help to resolve that problem. That applies to layers as well as broilers.

Finally, as I am conscious that I need to conclude, clearly the solution will be an effective vaccination. I encourage the Minister to pick up on the observations made by Members across the Chamber today that that has to be given the same level of priority as we gave to vaccinating against covid, if we are to have a poultry industry in this country and wild birds flourishing, as we would all like.