Environment Bill

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

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

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

We are facing one of the greatest tests in our history: extreme weather, droughts, wildfires, flooding yet again devastating communities across our country, rising sea levels, polluted rivers and toxic air.

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Air pollution across the west midlands affects some 2.8 million people and our young people are most at risk of dangerous levels of nitrogen dioxide. Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the hard work of the Labour council in Birmingham, who are introducing a clean air zone to try to tackle air pollution, and in commending my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), the Labour candidate for Mayor of Birmingham, who wants Birmingham to become the first carbon-neutral region in the country?

[Anna McMorrin]

I congratulate my hon. Friend’s local council and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill on the fantastic work they are doing. I am really proud that my own local authority, Cardiff Council, is doing groundbreaking work through a clean air plan to tackle air pollution levels. Cardiff Council has just been awarded £21 million from the Labour Welsh Government to invest in practical measures, such as retrofitting, taxi migration and transport initiatives. This is really groundbreaking stuff, which is absolutely needed.

Climate change is no longer a theory. It is a reality beating at our door. The recent floods across our country have shown it is not just something that happens to other people in far-flung places. It is happening right here. We have a moral, social and ethical obligation to the generations who will follow us to meet the environmental challenges of today and leave behind a healthier, more sustainable environment for tomorrow. This long awaited Environment Bill is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to strengthen our environmental standards at home, modernise waste and recycling strategies, and show global leadership at a time when it is so sorely needed. At COP26, we can show the world what we are doing.

There are some welcome measures in the Bill, but I am afraid it fails to show the promised gold standard stipulated by the Environment Secretary’s predecessor. I am not suggesting that any of this is easy. It is not easy to change the way that we do things to meet the climate challenge, but I am suggesting that it is absolutely imperative that we take urgent, radical action to build a sustainable environment and economy for the long term, to safeguard our planet for future generations—offering also opportunities for people, our communities and our businesses. That need not be an either/or scenario. I do not know for how many years I have been making speeches about either the environment or the economy. It need not be either/or; it can be both.

Today I want to focus on one of the Bill’s key elements: waste and resource efficiency and phasing out unsustainable packaging. The UK has been using and wasting resources at unsustainable levels; we are far behind the recycling rates of many of our European neighbours. There is a rising imperative for Government, business and consumers to think and act radically when it comes to plastics and packaging, waste and recycling.

In the previous Parliament, I presented my Packaging (Extended Producer Responsibility) Bill. UK Government figures had been shown to underestimate drastically how much plastic packaging waste Britain generates. A study by Eunomia, the waste experts, estimates that just 31% of waste is currently recycled. Where does that waste go? Much is exported and shipped overseas, and dumped into our precious oceans, washed up on the pristine shores of the Arctic and Antarctic. While the Bill sets targets on waste reduction and resource efficiency, there is more of a focus on end-of-life solutions, rather than tackling types of packaging, and the use and reuse of plastic packaging. That continues to place a disproportionate burden of waste collection and costs on local authorities.

The coalition of waste industry experts and local authorities that I set up around my Bill all believe that the Bill before us does not adequately deal with the reform of waste as it should. We desperately need radical reform of the system across the country. Producers need to take responsibility, from the packaging they produce to the clean-up at the end of the life cycle. This is the Government’s opportunity to be ambitious—to show the UK to be a world leader. It would be a great shame if they did not take this opportunity. Such reform is not in the Bill as it stands.

The current system has failed to get to grips with export waste. I am not confident that the Bill in any way toughens our stance on the restrictions on exporting waste. Even the most well intentioned of producers who ship plastic waste overseas to be recycled and treated correctly, lose control and ultimately lose sight of whether that waste was appropriately disposed of. The Secretary of State, in his opening remarks, said that he had toughened up that area, but I cannot see that in the Bill: we have gone from “prohibit” and “restrict” to providing for regulation. I ask the Secretary of State and the Minister: what does that mean? What does that regulation look like? How does it adequately meet the needs? It does not, as I see it.

Environment and Climate Change

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Climate change is damaging the lives of people in the UK and abroad. We see the impact through the two recent cyclones that have struck Mozambique. A country that usually expects only one major storm every 10 years has had two in two months, with the latest, Cyclone Kenneth, the strongest cyclone ever to hit Africa.

In the UK, climate change is seen as directly responsible for the projected rise in heat-related deaths and flooding, with the poorest and most vulnerable people most likely to bear the brunt. It is a tragedy that those least responsible for climate change suffer the most. We need to act to prevent a global climate disaster, yet the Government are not doing enough.

On emissions, the Government like to talk smugly about what a good job they have done, but the Committee on Climate Change warned last year that the UK will not meet the emission reduction targets laid out in the UK’s clean growth strategy for the fourth and fifth five-year carbon budgets. On biodiversity, too, the Government are falling short, with only five of the 19 targets in the strategic plan for biodiversity set to be achieved.

The Government’s commitment to fighting climate change is enshrined in the sustainable development goals, yet according to UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development we are underperforming on 72% of the targets that are relevant to the UK, and many of those are also relevant to climate change. Take target 11.6, on reducing the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including air pollution: UK100 found that 17.9 million NHS patients in England are registered at a GP practice in an area that exceeds the World Health Organisation annual limit for PM2.5 air pollution.

The national Government clearly do not care enough about climate change, but thankfully some of our local elected officials do: Bristol and Liverpool have pledged support for the sustainable development goals; Birmingham approved a motion on the sustainable development goals in November last year; and 59 councils, more than a third of them Labour-run, have declared a climate emergency. Although those are great initiatives, local government needs more support from central Government. Local authorities need resources to invest in better, greener infrastructure, to encourage and support more people to cycle and walk safely and to promote renewables.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. She has referred to what cities and authorities throughout the UK are doing; will she join me in congratulating the Welsh Government on declaring a climate emergency, and cities such as mine, Cardiff, which is doing so much work on sustainable transport, led by Councillor Huw Thomas?

[Preet Kaur Gill]

I am delighted to congratulate the Welsh Government on that.

The Government have blocked onshore wind, Britain’s cheapest form of energy. According to SERA, the reintroduction of onshore wind would cut another £1.6 billion off the collective electricity bill, but rather than act, the Government have chosen to block onshore wind. Sir David Attenborough has said that climate change is humanity’s

“greatest threat in thousands of years”,

yet the Government keep signing up to things that they fail to deliver. I call on Members on all Benches to back Labour’s motion and take the necessary action to address this threat nationally and internationally, to protect the planet and the climate for all future generations.