Draft Environment and Wildlife (Miscellaneous Amendments etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 General Committees

[The Chair]

Before we begin, may I remind Members about the social distancing regulations? Thank you, everyone, for sticking with them. Hansard colleagues will be grateful if any speaking notes could be sent to [e-mail].

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Environment and Wildlife (Miscellaneous Amendments etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair bright and early this morning, Mr Davies.

The draft regulations were laid before the House on 12 October. They make operability changes to retained European Union law and implement the Northern Ireland protocol in the context of the convention on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora, or CITES. That will be done by making changes to the UK’s existing CITES regime, comprised primarily of retained EU law, in so far as it will operate in Great Britain, to ensure that the relevant EU regulations may continue to be properly implemented in Northern Ireland, as required by the protocol.

Additionally, the draft regulations will consolidate previous statutory instruments making operability fixes to retained EU law, so that the changes appear in one place. The regulations also make further operability fixes in respect of more recent EU legislation that will become retained EU law, and minor corrections to regulations that were not dealt with in earlier amendments. The draft instrument makes a number of amendments, but it makes no changes to policy, other than those necessitated by the Northern Ireland protocol—that is the important thing to note.

CITES provides protection to more than 35,000 different species of endangered animals and plants, the range of which is incredibly diverse, from lions and giraffes, and parrots and turtles, to corals, orchids and the rosewood commonly found in guitars. I believe that you are quite an animal lover, Mr Davies, so you will be familiar with a lot of those creatures. By regulating international trade in animals and plants and in their parts, CITES aims to reduce the threat to those species in the wild.

CITES is implemented throughout the EU by the EU wildlife trade regulations, known as EUWTR, which are applicable in the UK. Those regulations set out the controls for trade in endangered species of wild animals and plants to and from the EU, the UK and the rest of the world. Many UK businesses trade in CITES specimens, and the relevant sectors are varied, from musicians and fashion, to pharmaceuticals and zoos.

The UK is party to CITES in its own right and will continue to be bound by its obligations after the end of the transition, regardless of the outcome of the negotiations with the EU. The UK is committed to supporting the work of CITES now and in future. At the CITES conference of the parties in August 2019, the UK used its world-leading scientific and technical expertise to play a pivotal role in proceedings. As a result of that work, 93 new species, including mako sharks and several species of gecko and newt, now benefit from enhanced protection under the convention. We have that world-leading reputation for such work, which obviously we will continue.

The primary purpose of the draft instrument is to make operability fixes to retained EU law and to implement the Northern Ireland protocol with regard to CITES. In doing so, we are consolidating into one instrument amendments made by previous CITES EU exit SIs that have not yet come into force, to make regulations clearer and more accessible to users.

In implementing the protocol and our convention obligations, CITES documents and relevant checks will be required for CITES specimens travelling between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, in both directions. That will affect traders in Northern Ireland and traders in Great Britain who regularly move specimens in and out of Northern Ireland.

The instrument will also make operability fixes in respect of more recent EU legislation, which will become EU retained law, and minor corrections not included in the previous instruments. For example, the instrument deals with a new suspensions regulation of 2019, which replaces and updates an earlier regulation. The suspensions regulation provides for bans on imports of certain specimens from certain countries needing additional protection—for example, wild lions from Ethiopia, wild Dryas monkeys from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and African cherry wood from Equatorial Guinea.

Part 2 of the instrument amends domestic regulations that provide for, among other things, enforcement powers with regard to CITES. Part 3 amends retained EU regulations on CITES to ensure that the regime is operable in Great Britain after the end of the transition period. The instrument was sent to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments for pre-scrutiny and was returned with minor comments relating primarily to minor drafting issues. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee asked the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs a number of questions, as outlined in its report. Those questions related to the practical implications of documentary checks for movement between Northern Ireland and Great Britain and examples of what types of species are commonly traded in the United Kingdom.

Traders moving CITES specimens between Northern Ireland and Great Britain will at the end of the transition period be required to obtain and present relevant CITES documentation. Interestingly, there is currently no data on movements of CITES species between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, as that trade does not yet require documentation. Members may be interested to hear that the most commonly traded species between the UK and the rest of the world are alligators and crocodiles, for their leather, and live falcons, I believe for falconry—they are pets, really—and potentially for pest control.

The changes made by the instrument will affect DEFRA and the Animal and Plant Health Agency, as documentation that was previously required at the EU border will now be required at the UK border—Great Britain or Northern Ireland, as the case may be. APHA has increased staff numbers in anticipation of that increased workload. As I said, the statutory instrument does not change policy other than as required by the implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol, so no consultation was undertaken. Drafts of the instrument were, however, shared with the devolved Administrations during its development and drafting. In line with published guidance, there is no need to conduct an impact assessment of the instrument because there is no, or no significant, impact on the public, private or voluntary sectors. The territorial extent of the instrument is the United Kingdom.

As a result of the protocol, documentation will be required for the movement of CITES specimens between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That will require additional enforcement by Border Force at points of entry and exit between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Border Force has increased staff numbers and trained new staff in order to address that increase and is well prepared for those additional checks from the end of the transition period. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.

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[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the shadow Minister for his comments and the raft of questions. He has obviously looked closely at what has happened in the other place and has put the measure under a great deal of scrutiny. I will set it in context quickly, then run through as many of the questions as I had time to note down, because they were coming thick and fast. If he feels that I do not cover something, I am happy to follow up afterwards, if that is acceptable.

To prepare for the end of the transition period, it is essential to have the right legislation in place to continue to protect our endangered species, in accordance with our international obligations, to ensure that trade does not threaten the survival of those species in the wild. The UK remains absolutely committed to supporting work on CITES. The hon. Gentleman was slightly derogatory about our global leadership, but we are recognised around the world for our scientific lead on this issue—that is genuinely true—and we will not lessen or weaken that in any way. Indeed, there might be opportunities to strengthen it, which I would be keen on.

As hon. Members know, I am a great supporter of our National Wildlife Crime Unit and, as a Back Bencher, I fought to get that money committed for it. I think the hon. Gentleman was involved in that as well, from the other side of the House: it was a joint initiative. I was interested to hear about the CITES hustings that he attended, which sound fascinating.

[Daniel Zeichner]

On the National Wildlife Crime Unit, is that funding secured for the future? I am not necessarily expecting the Minister to give an answer today, but it is an important point.

[Rebecca Pow]

It is an important point. I am really annoyed with myself, because I read about it last night and I cannot lay my hands on the actual details. May I write to the hon. Gentleman about that? Certainly, it is in there and it has been highlighted. I will give him chapter and verse in writing.

The instrument will achieve that protection by ensuring that relevant regulations can operate properly after the end of the transition period. It will make operability changes to retained EU law, ensure implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol with regard to CITES and consolidate amendments made by earlier instruments that have not yet come into force, to make regulation clearer and more accessible to all who use them. The important thing is that there will not be any changes to policy, other than those necessitated by the Northern Ireland protocol. That should give some assurances.

I will go through some of the comments. I hope I can give some more useful background. The hon. Gentleman referred to our scientific involvement. As we have left the EU, we will no longer participate in or be bound by the EU structures, including the EU scientific review group, under CITES regulations applicable to GB, but our scientific authorities, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee for fauna and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, for flora—which is, of course, world-leading—will continue to provide advice on a range of CITES matters and to collaborate internationally with other CITES scientific authorities as appropriate. Our involvement in the convention to which I referred demonstrates that we will not be weakening in that respect.

The hon. Gentleman suggested that we might somehow weaken our combatting of the illegal wildlife trade. It is essential that we keep our eye on that. The draft SI will not weaken that. The UK is and will remain a world leader in the fight against the illegal wildlife trade. In 2018, the UK convened the largest ever global international wildlife trade conference, at which 65 countries signed up to the London declaration committing to take urgent and co-ordinated action against the illegal wildlife trade. That is not something we will suddenly drop. Through our internationally renowned IWT challenge fund, we have committed £26 million since 2014 to 85 projects around the world that directly counter the illegal wildlife trade, including projects to reduce demand, to strengthen enforcement, to ensure effective legal frameworks and to develop sustainable livelihoods.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Will the Minister explain exactly how the UK will continue that international collaboration to prevent the unlawful import of wildlife species?

[Rebecca Pow]

In the same ways as we have been doing it before, through our international connections. We have Lord Goldsmith in our Department, and he does a great deal of work on this agenda internationally—he is also the international environment Minister. We will keep all our links going.

The very fact that we are holding COP26—it is on climate change, environment and biodiversity, and we have nature and adaptation as part of that now—means that there are levers that link to this important issue. A lot of the illegal wildlife trade is linked to the devastation of our forests and the destruction of habitats. They are all closely interlinked, and that is something we intend to be leaders in, continuing our work.

At the United Nations General Assembly in September, the Prime Minister announced a scaling up of UK funding to tackle the illegal wildlife trade, as part of a £220 million international biodiversity fund. I hope that gives some reassurances that we are absolutely committed. It is something the Prime Minister is particularly interested in.

I want to be clear that several SIs were made in 2019 in order to make CITES operable in the UK. In view of further changes that we needed to make as a result of the Northern Ireland protocol, we considered that it would be preferable to put all the necessary changes into one piece of legislation, to make it more accessible, clearer for users and to increase transparency. Potentially, the draft regulations will help the whole issue of tackling the illegal wildlife trade.

I was asked about the impact on business. CITES checks are not particularly onerous. CITES requires 100% documentary checks, as opposed to physical checks on consignments—we do not expect our Border Force control to open the alligator cages. The documentary checks involve Border Force inspecting—I said that, but perhaps I should retract it—and endorsing and wet stamping relevant import and export permits and other documents. Physical checks take place only on a risk basis.

Costs for permits and certificates are set out in the Control of Trade in Endangered Species (Fees) Regulations 2009. They would be incurred by traders wishing to obtain such documents. We have liaised regularly with Border Force colleagues on the need for those checks, and Border Force already carries out such checks on consignments from the rest of the world. It has increased its staff numbers to meet the additional requirements. DEFRA has been working closely with APHA, which has been involved in recruiting and training staff to deal with the project and the uplift in the volume of CITES movements and documentation anticipated. I think I have covered the scientific organisations.

The shadow Minister then touched on where the specimens or species would be imported through. CITES specimens must enter and exit Great Britain and Northern Ireland through points of entry and exit designed especially for that purpose. We are designating 29 UK sea and airports for use after the end of the transition period. There is a list of the ports on the Government website, gov.uk. In particular, I highlight that Belfast International airport and Belfast seaport will be among those designations at the end of the transition period.

I hope that covers the main points of the inquiries quite rightly raised by the shadow Minister, because it is important for us to get the legislation right. To close, as I have outlined, the draft instrument makes operability changes to EU-derived domestic regulations and retained direct EU legislation, and implements the Northern Ireland protocol with regard to CITES. It will ensure that appropriate protections for the trade in endangered specimens continue to be in place after the end of the transition.

Question put and agreed to.

Environment Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 12th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Whitehead]

As my hon. Friend suggests, it is a less transparent process than before. It appears that, in this clause, we are retreating from the principle of transparency. Of course, I may be completely wrong, and there may be factors, to which I hope to be pointed shortly, that mitigate or dissolve that concern. I am sure that the Minister can reassure me on that, or point to things that mean that the clause, odd though it looks in terms of transparency, is not as bad as it seems on the surface.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

It is good to be back. I thank the shadow Minister for his comments, and all hon. Members for carrying the proceedings last week when I was unwell. I put on record my thanks to the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot, who did a sterling job, and to the Opposition for, I think, being kind.

We are talking about clauses 37 to 40 en bloc. Those clauses ensure that the OEP can operate effectively, openly and transparently when carrying out its important duties, which of course is vital. Clause 37 ensures that relevant Ministers are informed and able to participate in relevant enforcement cases, and that the OEP can recommend ministerial involvement in legal proceedings. That allows it to make a case for a Minister’s participation in instances where it may be helpful for Ministers to provide input to the proceedings.

The shadow Minister touched on clause 38. I gather that he will not oppose it, but it is always good to have some questions and inquiries. I hope I will make it clear that the clause requires the OEP to publish statements at specific points during the enforcement process. The clause is important because it establishes the OEP as an open, effective and transparent watchdog.

If the OEP, having decided to carry out an investigation, is to do so effectively, we must enable it to obtain and review all the available information from other public bodies, so that it can reach a robust and fair conclusion. Clause 39 therefore ensures that, in appropriate circumstances, obligations of secrecy that would otherwise apply are disapplied to enable public authorities to provide information to the OEP in complaints and enforcement cases. All these clauses work together. It is important to note, though, that we have also ensured that certain fundamental protections, such as those set out in the Data Protection Act 2018, are unaffected by this clause.

Openness and transparency are important, but confidentiality is also vital to allow the OEP to establish a safe space for dialogue with public authorities, so that it can quickly and effectively establish the facts in a case and explore potential pragmatic solutions without the need for litigation, where that can be reasonably avoided. The whole system has been set up in a way that means that when the OEP is carrying out its enforcement functions, it first takes a liaison, advisory and discussion role. We want to do all that before we get down the road of litigation and all those other things. That is very important.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire for his comments. He is absolutely right that we do not want to tie the hands of the OEP. It has to be independent, and it has to be able to come to its conclusions about which bits of information will and will not be relevant.

Clause 40 plays an important role in the OEP carrying out its functions by ensuring an appropriate degree of confidentiality during the enforcement process. I assure the shadow Minister that the clause does not create a blanket ability to prevent information being disclosed, which I think is his fear; that is not how the OEP will operate. The OEP and public authorities will still have to assess any requests for information case by case, in line with the relevant regulations.

Clauses 39 and 40 therefore strike a careful balance between retaining confidentiality of that very sensitive aspect of the enforcement process and creating greater transparency across the process. As has been said many times, transparency is absolutely key to good governance. The EU does not even have such a system, so we are setting ourselves up as world leaders by introducing this kind of independent body. I hope those points have reassured the Committee.

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[Dr Whitehead]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, which I had not fully covered. The National Trust is, indeed, responsible for sweeping the leaves and various other things from these monuments, and it is among the bodies expressing concern that the meaning of clause 41 will not adequately serve the purpose of guiding the clauses that go before it. I hope that the Minister can provide a good explanation for the meaning in parenthesis being as it is. It is not that it should not be there—it will cover a number of issues, and if it was not there then we might start considering a modern block of flats part of the natural environment. Clearly, we would not want to go that far. I hope that the Minister accepts that amendment 126 strikes the right balance, ensuring that we have a much better definition to work with and that we make a distinction between buildings and other structures that are clearly not part of our natural environment and those that have become so, certainly in the public’s view, and deserve to be included in this meaning clause.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his amendment on the meaning of the natural environment. Obviously, we discussed this previously in some of the earlier clauses relating to heritage and such. I recognise that the natural environment does not exist in a vacuum and that our interactions with it and use of it create a heritage that we should be proud of, as I think we all are. It does not exist in a vacuum—the shadow Minister himself touched on this—but I believe it would be inappropriate to include the elements in the amendment in this particular definition, given that one of its key aims is to determine the scope of the functions of the Office for Environmental Protection.

The OEP must remain focused on its principal objective of environmental protection and the improvement of the natural environment. It is not its place to investigate complaints against breaches of legislation such as that concerned with cultural heritage such as listed buildings, which my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire touched on, listed building consents or protection for ancient monuments. There is a raft of legislation that deals with all those things, and that is not the role of the OEP.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I welcome the Minister back to the Committee. This is a fine distinction, but does she not agree that, in so dramatically excluding “buildings or other structures”, the Bill goes too far, and the amendment is an attempt to bring it back slightly?

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[Rebecca Pow]

Obviously all that has been considered and thought about, but the hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I will come on to what the 25-year plan says in a minute, because that really nails why the wording he wants is not there: it is because we believe it is already covered. It is important to note that the hon. Member’s explanatory statement—[Interruption.] I will just stop that buzzing, Mr Chairman; it is very annoying.

[The Chair]

It is very annoying.

[Rebecca Pow]

I apologise—I did not know it was on.

It is important to note that the hon. Member’s explanatory statement is very specific about the effect he intends the amendment to have. It states that he specifically does not wish the historic environment to be included,

“in the definition of ‘environmental law’, or in the enforcement functions of the OEP.”

It is necessary to have a distinction to ensure that, as I have just touched on, laws concerning, for example, building safety or other matters do not get tangled up in this and are not included in the OEP’s remit. Its focus must be the natural environment.

The clarification is welcome, and it is good to think about it, but unfortunately I must also point out our concern about the unintended effect that this amendment will have. The three definitions in clauses 41, 42 and 43 are intrinsically linked, working together to underpin the OEP and determine the scope of its enforcement functions. Therefore, including those matters within the meaning of the natural environment would mean that they would also be included in scope of the meaning of “environmental law” and the OEP’s enforcement policy.

Going slightly back on the previous point I made, the definition would not preclude the OEP’s looking at any breaches of environmental law that were related to the environment, for example, around Maiden castle or the twmp mentioned by the hon. Member for Newport West. Say, for example, that that was a protected habitat or there was a protected species within that habitat—I have the same around my wonderful Wellington monument, which is managed by the National Trust—and there was seen to be some contravention of the nature conservation law in relation to that habitat, which I would say Maiden castle is very much part and parcel of; that would come under the remit of the OEP to investigate, so a lot of it is included.

In line with the explanatory note, I am sure hon. Members will agree with my earlier point that it would not be appropriate for the OEP to oversee legislation in relation to all those specific wider matters. I assure the shadow Minister that the absence of the historic environment from this definition does not preclude the Government’s work on important aspects of the historic environment. For example, to touch on the previous intervention, the Bill ensures that the 25-year environment plan, including the recognition of the connection between the natural environment and heritage that is specifically written out in that 25-year plan, will be adopted as the first environmental improvement plan through the Bill. I also remind hon. Members that we have a manifesto pledge to protect and restore the natural environment, which is all part of this—it is all-encompassing. The 25-year environment plan will set the benchmark for future plans, including how to balance environmental and heritage considerations. In the light of that explanation, I ask the hon. Member to kindly withdraw the amendment.

[Dr Whitehead]

With the greatest respect, I do not think the Minister has made the sort of case I anticipated she might make this morning to explain why the clause is so loose as far as buildings and other structures are concerned. It is not the case that our amendment would prejudice clauses subsequent to this—the Minister set out clauses 42 and 43 as falling within, for example, the meaning of environmental law. We think it would be a good thing if the structures and buildings that have changed the natural environment and have effectively become part of it were included in those considerations.

[Rebecca Pow]

I have the exact words here of the 25-year environment plan, which is the first environmental improvement plan. It commits us to:

“Safeguarding and enhancing the beauty of our natural scenery and improving its environmental value while being sensitive to considerations of its heritage.”

It is in there.

[Dr Whitehead]

I am sorry to say that that is rather a tenuous linkage to the fact that we must set out a plan. I have a copy of the plan we have already set out in front of me. There is merely half a line within that general plan to say that we should be “sensitive”. There is nothing else in the plan, as far as I can see, that says anything further than that—nothing that goes anywhere near the sort of consideration that we are putting in front of the Committee this morning.

The amendment makes it clear that we should not only be sensitive, but that we should include as a consideration those historic monuments and those elements of heritage that effectively form part of the natural landscape. Nothing in the Bill addresses that point, and the amendment seeks to put that consideration on the face of the Bill.

The Minister has underlined our point to some extent. Being sensitive is not good enough; we have to have something in the Bill that spells out the overall consideration that should be made when thinking about the natural environment. We think strongly about this point, to the extent that we will press the Committee to a Division this morning. The amendment has very considerable merit and, whether or not the Division is successful—we will see when the votes come out, rather in the way of the American election—we nevertheless hope that the Minister will consider the point further.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

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[Daniel Zeichner]

This is a short clause, but it is very important. I am fortunate to represent Cambridge, a city with some fantastic environmental organisations. The David Attenborough Building is renowned. It houses the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, which includes the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Fauna & Flora International and BirdLife International. I was fortunate to visit them a while ago, when I was preparing for a Westminster Hall debate. I was briefed by a range of dazzling experts. I was struck from their presentations by how many talked about the marine environment. I had not realised how significant it was. That was very much the term they used throughout their recommendations and advice to me.

I know the Minister cares passionately about the marine environment. I remember a Prime Minister’s Question Time when she questioned the showering habits of the Speaker. It is amazing the things that people remember. I should be clear that she was referring to the microbeads in Mr Bercow’s shower gel. I do not doubt the passion that she feels for the marine environment.

That leads me to question, given that we all agree on this point, why it cannot be put in the Bill. I believe the Government intend to include it. If there is such resistance to putting it in the Bill, it is either because each side wants to defend its position and does not want to give way, or there is something a bit more sinister.

[Rebecca Pow]

indicated dissent.

[Daniel Zeichner]

The Minister says no. She might want to think about that, maybe not this morning, but as the Bill progresses. I would have said that including that one phrase would strengthen the Bill from the Government’s point of view and not leave people wondering what other treasures close to our land mass some parts of Government organisations have their eye on.

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[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the shadow Minister for his very kind opening words. I also thank him for his interest in the clause, which is crucial to future environmental governance. I appreciate the sentiments behind the amendment, but I must disagree and say that it is unnecessary. I have thought about this matter a great deal myself, as hon. Friends and Members can imagine. I have also spoken to the Natural Capital Committee at length about this, and it is satisfied with what we have come up with after much discussion.

Hon. Members are aware that the marine environment is by far the largest part of the UK’s environment and, as such, is an enormous part of our natural world. It is therefore vital that we safeguard crucial marine ecosystems, and that is a core part of our environmental policy. One of the names I get in my portfolio is the marine Minister, so I say, “Leave water and the marine space out at your peril.”

That is why the marine environment is included within the existing clause, as is clarified on page 57 of the explanatory notes. I hear what everyone says about the explanatory notes, but the meaning of the natural environment explicitly covers “water”. This includes seawater, canals, lakes, the Somerset levels—which are seawater that has come inland, goes back out, and is then joined by inland water—and all the underground aquifers.

A very good point was made: where do we stop with these lists of things? That is important to remember. The definition also covers—I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Truro and Falmouth and for Keighley for mentioning this—the land that includes the seabed, the intertidal zones and the coastal plains. They are all part of the natural environment. Any plant, wild animal, living organism or habitat is also included in the definition, regardless of where it is physically.

Out of interest, I want to touch on the target-setting powers in the Bill. Targets can be set on any matter relating to the natural environment, which could include the marine environment. That means we can set long-term targets or legally binding targets that can help improve the marine environment. The Government must set out at least one target in their four priority areas, which include air, biodiversity, water and nature. The initial round of targets might include a marine environment target, and that could be one of the biodiversity targets. That measure is already in the Bill; it will actually bolster, protect and strengthen the myriad measures we already have in place for protecting the marine space. All of this will dovetail with the sustainability elements in the Fisheries Bill, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Newport West, so it is all part and parcel.

I hope I have provided some assurances. The marine environment is very much included within the definition and, as such, each element of the environmental governance framework—including the OEP—will apply to it. On those grounds, I propose that the amendment is unnecessary, and I respectfully ask the shadow Minister to withdraw it.

[Dr Whitehead]

The Minister has given some good and solid assurances concerning what she thinks the clause could be interpreted to mean. Clearly, the fact that she has said that this morning suggests that it might be possible, should there be a dispute about this, to draw upon her words as underlining the Government’s good intentions. We have never disputed that. We are happy that the Minister thinks in that particular way.

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[The Chair]

I hope it is not impertinent of me to point out that we have now been at this for more than an hour and have achieved only clause 41, which is less speedy progress than other Committees I have chaired. It might be helpful to the Committee to seek to make speedier progress.

Clause 42

Meaning of “Environmental Protection”

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

I beg to move amendment 31, in Clause 42, page26, line 1, after “considering” insert “advising”.

Member’s explanatory statement

The fourth limb of the definition of environmental protection covers the functions of monitoring, assessing, considering or reporting on anything within the other three limbs. This amendment adds the function of “advising”, which was included in the equivalent provisions of the draft Environment (Principles and Governance) Bill (clause 31(2)(d)), and last session’s Environment Bill (clause 40(2)(d)).

[The Chair]

With this is it will be convenient to debate Government amendment 65.

[Rebecca Pow]

Before I begin, it was terribly remiss of me that I omitted to mention the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith when discussing the previous amendment. I meant to do so, but I forgot to pick up my bit of paper. All the hon. Lady’s comments were welcome and duly noted, and added to the general discussion and debate that we had about marine matters. I apologise for that; I meant to do so and then it was too late.

Government amendments 31 and 65 insert the word “advising” into clause 42(d) of the Bill and make the same amendment to schedule 2 in respect of the Office for Environmental Protection in Northern Ireland. This is a technical amendment to ensure that our new environmental governance framework can operate fully and effectively.

Environmental protection is at the heart of what the Bill intends to achieve, and as such it is vital that we ensure that the meaning of environmental protection provided in the Bill is as effective as possible. Without the amendment, statutory duties for public bodies to advise on environmental protection, such as section 4 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006—which we all refer to as the NERC Act—which places a duty on Natural England to provide advice at the request of a public authority, would not be considered environmental law.

The OEP would not be able to monitor or enforce this kind of legislative provision and the Secretary of State would also not be obliged to make a statement about any new legislation in this place. Therefore, not including “advising” in this clause would place unnecessary and unhelpful limitations on our new environmental governance framework. This would limit the Government’s ambition to be a global leader in championing the most effective policies and legislation for the environment. I therefore commend the amendment to the Committee.

[Dr Whitehead]

The Minister’s amendment does indeed clarify matters and enables a better definition for monitoring assessments and reporting. The Opposition are happy for the word “advising” to go into the clause, but I would like the Minister to reflect briefly on why that word, which she is now putting in as an administrative amendment, was in previous iterations of the Bill. It was in the original Bill two years ago and also in the current Bill’s immediate predecessor, which was unable to make progress because of the election. Why is it, then, that the word did not appear in the current Bill? Was it an accident? Did someone consider it inappropriate, and is the Minister now making up for that lapse? Unless it was an accident, could the Minister assure me that there was no underlying reason for leaving out the word, the reinsertion of which now requires a Government amendment, and that she has not mentioned anything that we ought to consider?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question and for saying that the Opposition are happy with getting the word “advising” into this clause. I think I am at complete liberty to say that it was just a technical correction. I am pleased that it has been spotted and thank the hon. Gentleman for having done so.

Amendment 31 agreed to.

Clause 42, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 43

Meaning of “environmental law”

[Dr Whitehead]

I beg to move amendment 127, in clause 43, page 26, line 6, leave out “mainly”.

This amendment ensures that any legislative provision that concerns environmental protection is included in the definition of “environmental law”.

Clause 43 concerns itself with one word, but, as I think hon. Members will appreciate, it provides, as is the case with many Bills, the crucial underpinning of a particular part—namely, those clauses up to clause 43. In other words, it defines the words we have discussed this morning and on other occasions. Although it may appear that a great deal of debate is focused on very small parts of the Bill—on one or two words—it is important to pay attention to them and to get this right. I appreciate that we may appear not to be making the progress we would otherwise want to make, but this is essential for the overall progress of the Bill. I can reveal to the Committee that I have discussed with the Government Whip exactly how much progress we can make today, and we need to ensure that it is commensurate with getting the Bill through in good order overall. I assure hon. Members—and, indeed, you, Mr Gray—that we want to make good progress and get the Bill through in good order and in good time. I hope that what we do this morning will aid rather than impede that progress.

Clause 43 concerns itself with the meaning of environmental law. Subsection (1) states that it

“is mainly concerned with environmental protection, and…is not concerned with an excluded matter”.

Subsection (2) defines excluded matters. We are concerned about the word “mainly”. We think that legislation that defines the meaning of environmental law should be “concerned with” environmental protection, not “concerned mainly with” with environmental protection. The use of that word implies that a number of other things could be construed as not being concerned with environmental protection. Logic suggests that the inclusion of the word “mainly” admits the possibility and, indeed, the likelihood that there are things outwith that particular definition.

Subsection (2) refers to excluded matters and I think we will discuss some of those in a future debate. Nevertheless, assuming it stands, it defines what is outwith the concerns of environmental protection. The Bill itself puts forward the things that are excluded from consideration, while subsection (1) uses the word “mainly”, which adds another area of uncertainty regarding what is and what is not excluded.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I support the broad approach to defining environmental law, which has always been our intention with clause 43. We also need to ensure, however, that the definition is practical and workable, particularly for the OEP. The definition must not give the OEP such a wide remit that it is unmanageable or intrudes into areas where it would be inappropriate for the OEP to act or to be expected to act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

rose—

[Rebecca Pow]

I think that is quite a good example, but the hon. Member for Cambridge might come up with another.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I will not come up with a counter-example, but I think many would draw a very different conclusion from the Minister’s example. I am not a lawyer, but we are advised that the term “mainly” is mainly ambiguous in law. Others have suggested that “related to” would be a better term. Why have the Government chosen “mainly” rather than “related to”?

[Rebecca Pow]

Just like the hon. Gentleman, we have also taken a great deal of advice and have used “mainly” for the reasons that I have set out. Although the OEP could still prioritise, it would be unhelpful for stakeholders were the OEP to be concerned in a huge range of issues that have only minor or tangential links to environmental protection or improvement.

It is important to note that the definition is already broader than it might initially seem because it applies to individual legislative provisions, so it could be part of a wider Act or statutory instrument. That means that even if most of an Act or statutory instrument is not mainly concerned with environmental protections, any specific provisions that are considered environmental law would come under the OEP’s remit. It is also worth noting that the term “mainly” is not prescribed in the Bill. The OEP and public authorities will therefore be able to interpret it in accordance with its normal—another legal word—meaning.

I appreciate the intentions of the hon. Member for Southampton, Test, but the amendment is not necessary or appropriate because the existing definition is sufficiently broad and balanced with the need to maintain the OEP’s focus on the protection and improvement of the natural environmental. I therefore ask him to withdraw his amendment.

[Dr Whitehead]

I thank the Minister for her response—she had a good go at it. We will not withdraw our concern, but as the Minister has given some reassurance about how the term “mainly” might be interpreted and has indicated that some thought was given to that prior to the Bill’s drafting, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Deidre Brock]

I beg to move amendment 115, in clause 43, page 26, line 10, leave out paragraph (b).

This amendment removes the exceptions for legislative provisions relating to armed forces and national security matters from the definition of ‘environmental law’ for the purposes of the scope of the OEP’s functions.

I thank the Minister for her kind words and would like to correct myself slightly because I did not welcome her back to her place earlier. I am very pleased to see her and am glad that she has recovered.

The armed forces are potentially among the biggest polluters. The evidence from Scotland demonstrates that there has to be some oversight of the potential for environmental damage. I mentioned that previously in respect of the issues that have arisen. The nuclear bases on the Clyde do some work with SEPA—the Scottish Environment Protection Agency—and local authorities to alert them to some instances, but not all. Even those scant measures are the subject of voluntary agreements rather than obligations or regulatory oversight. No information is forthcoming, however, on the rest of the defence estate across Scotland. I imagine there is nothing about the estates across England either.

We know that the MOD does environmental assessments because it told me so in answer to written questions, but that information is kept secret. That is not good enough. We all have to play our part. As I have said, no individual Department should be completely excused from shouldering that responsibility. The phrase “so far as is reasonably practical” is used in a lot of legislation from which defence and our armed forces are exempt, and it could be too easily used as a get-out when that suited. It is time for that loophole to be removed, and for oversight to be in a place whereby such activities could receive independent and robust scrutiny that—while allowing for sensitivities around national security and similar matters—ensured that activities could be monitored satisfactorily. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. We heard something about the issue with respect to previous clauses as well, and we recognise the intention behind those. Protecting our country is fundamental, which is why exemptions for the armed forces and national security are maintained. Any legislation that could be covered by those exemptions would concern highly sensitive matters that were vital to the protection of our realm, so it is appropriate to restrict the OEP’s oversight of and access to information in such areas.

We want to make it clear, so that there is absolutely no doubt, that legislative provisions relating to these matters cannot be environmental law, and so cannot fall within the OEP’s remit. Legislative provisions concerning national security would cover matters such as the continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent and other policy areas vital to the protection and defence of the UK, which are of the utmost importance.

The single most important thing that we do is protect our people. It would not be appropriate for the OEP to have jurisdiction here, where its intervention could hinder vital work. We expect that such specialist matters would also be outside the OEP’s areas of expertise. As such, the OEP would not be appropriately qualified to enforce such issues. Legislative provisions concerning the armed forces would cover matters related to personnel and staffing that link to defence capability and matters such as the Armed Forces Act. It would not be appropriate for the OEP to have a role overseeing the legislation.

To be clear: the exemption does not mean that public authorities such as the MOD or any of the armed forces will be exempt from scrutiny by the OEP in respect of their implementation of environmental law—for example, a lot of MOD land has site of special scientific interest designation; it simply means that legislation concerning the armed forces or national security will be excluded from the OEP’s remit. Much of the defence land is protected land with SSSI designation. The OEP will still be able to hold public authorities accountable on that land for their statutory duties concerning the protection of the site, as the relevant legislative provisions will not be covered as regards national security or the armed forces.

The Scottish Government have, I note, taken a similar approach on the issue in section 10(3)(a) of the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill 2018. They also have a number of exemptions that are not unrelated to this. It is worth noting that the Ministry of Defence has its own environmental policies, and it went into that in some detail last week. It does a great deal of good environmental work. I should mention the stone curlew project I visited, but there are many others where it is doing excellent work for protected species and habitats. It prides itself on that, and has a strong record of delivering on those commitments. On the whole, its SSSIs are in pretty good condition, so all credit to the MOD.

I know that the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith has done a lot of work in this area, and it is something she has talked about from the beginning. I thank her for raising this, because it gives us a chance to make the argument. Given the sensitivities and existing environmental commitments, and given my clarification that the provision does not exempt from scrutiny public authorities that are concerned with national security, I hope she will consider withdrawing the amendment.

[Deidre Brock]

I remind the Minister again that the Scottish Government have no control over defence issues, so it is perhaps no surprise that they have had to exempt that in the continuity Bill. I hear what she says about some scrutiny being applied, but I still feel that there is too much of a blackout around the information relating to these areas. That is what I, environmental groups and members of the public have issues with.

I appreciate that there are sensitive areas that will have to be dealt with differently, but I am afraid I remain to be convinced that the exemptions are appropriate in this day and age, and that transparency across Government is not required by the public and various environmental groups that we have all dealt with. This is certainly a principle that is very important to me. With that in mind, I will push the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Lady for tabling her amendment and for saying she will not push it to a vote. Although I recognise the intention behind the amendment, it is important that the exemption is maintained to ensure sound economic and fiscal decision making. It would be inappropriate for the OEP to have oversight of the implementation of legislative provisions that specifically concerned taxation, spending or the allocation of resources, as the OEP needs to keep its focus on the protection of the natural environment.

Legislation regarding taxation is developed by Treasury Ministers, as the hon. Lady knows, and it is important that they are able to set taxes to raise the revenue that allows us to deliver essential services, such as the NHS, policing, education and schools—all those things that we all need and want. It would not be appropriate for the OEP to have jurisdiction over this area or over the administration of taxation regimes by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

I want to give a bit of clarity on this, as I think there may be some confusion: the term “taxation” does not extend to legislation relating to regulatory schemes such as the plastic bag charge, which was particularly successful, or the imposition of fees to cover the cost of a regulatory regime. Therefore, legislation relating to these matters could be considered within environmental law, and the OEP could take enforcement action if the public authority failed to comply.

The words

“spending and the allocation of resources within government”

refer to decisions about how money and resources are designated within and between Departments. When specifically considering the exclusion or allocation of resources, it is important to note that it is only the legislative provisions on this subject that are excluded. It is just a matter of being very clear about that, as there are many other areas, such as the plastic bag charge, where the OEP will be able to engage.

If a public authority were to argue that it did not have adequate resources to implement an environmental law, that would not stop the legislative provisions in question being environmental law, although the authority’s comments on its resources could, of course, be considered during the OEP’s investigation. On those grounds, I ask the hon. Member whether she might withdraw her amendment, now that I have given her more clarity.

[Deidre Brock]

I thank the Minister for her comments, which have provided me with some clarity. As I said, I will not be pressing this matter to a vote, although I think I will pursue it in the future. We are all well aware of the Treasury’s track record in resisting attempts to constrain its activities in any way—I suspect there has been some arm twisting done behind the scenes on this one—and this is an issue I will revisit. I thank her again for her words and beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendments made: 32, in clause 43, page 26, line 16, leave out

“the National Assembly for Wales”

and insert “Senedd Cymru”.

See Amendment 28.—(Rebecca Pow.)

Amendment 33, in clause 43, page 26, line 21, leave out

“the National Assembly for Wales”

and insert “Senedd Cymru”.

See Amendment 28.—(Rebecca Pow.)

Amendment 34, in clause 43, page 26, line 22, leave out “Assembly” and insert “Senedd”.

See Amendment 28.—(Rebecca Pow.)

Clause 43, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 44

Interpretation of Part 1: General

Amendments made: 35, in clause 44, page 27, line 7, leave out

“the National Assembly for Wales”

and insert “Senedd Cymru”.

See Amendment 28.—(Rebecca Pow.)

Amendment 36, in clause 44, page 27, line 17, leave out

“the National Assembly for Wales”

and insert “Senedd Cymru”.

See Amendment 28.—(Rebecca Pow.)

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I beg to move amendment 221, in schedule 3, page 146, line 24, at end insert—

“22A (1) Section (Guidance on OEP’s enforcement policy and functions) (guidance on OEP’s enforcement policy and functions) is amended as follows.

(2) At the end of subsection (1) insert ‘, so far as relating to the OEP’s Part 1 enforcement functions.’

(3) In subsection (2)—

(a) in paragraph (a) after ‘policy,’ insert ‘so far as relating to its Part 1 enforcement functions,’;

(b) in paragraph (b) for ‘enforcement functions’ substitute ‘Part 1 enforcement functions’.

(4) In subsection (5) for “enforcement functions” substitute ‘Part 1 enforcement functions’.”

Schedule 3 to the Bill confers on the OEP enforcement functions in relation to Northern Ireland, which are similar to its enforcement functions under Part 1 of the Bill. Guidance issued by the Secretary of State under NC24 is not to apply to the enforcement functions conferred by Schedule 3, which are devolved. This amendment ensures that when Schedule 3 comes into force, the guidance power under NC24 will be limited to the OEP’s enforcement functions under Part 1 of the Bill and will not include its enforcement functions under Schedule 3.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss Government new clause 24—Guidance on OEP’s enforcement policy and functions.

[Rebecca Pow]

That was a massive canter or, actually, a gallop. We have whizzed on. The amendment and new clause will provide a power for the Secretary of State to issue guidance to the OEP on the matters listed in clause 22(6) concerning its enforcement policy. The OEP will be required to have regard to this guidance in preparing its enforcement policy and in carrying out its enforcement functions. This is an important new provision, which will allow the Secretary of State to seek to address any ambiguities or issues relating to the OEP’s enforcement functions where necessary. We expect the OEP to develop an effective and proportionate enforcement policy in any event, but Secretary of State guidance can act as a helpful resource for the OEP in the process. For example, the Secretary of State may issue guidance to the OEP relating to how it should respect the integrity of other statutory regimes, including those implemented by regulators such as the Environment Agency. That could also be invaluable to resolve and clarify any confusion that may arise regarding the wider environmental regulatory landscape.

As the Minister ultimately responsible to Parliament for the OEP’s use of public money, it is appropriate that the Secretary of State should be able to act if the OEP were not exercising its functions effectively or needed guidance from the Secretary of State to be able to do so, for instance, if it were failing to act strategically and, therefore, not taking appropriate action in relation to major systematic issues. The new clause will not provide the Secretary of State with any power to issue directions to the OEP—that is important—or to intervene in specific decisions. Rather, the OEP is simply required to have regard to the guidance in preparing its enforcement policy and exercising its enforcement functions. Furthermore, the Secretary of State must exercise the power in line with the provision in paragraph 17 of schedule 1, which requires them to

“have regard to the need to protect”

the OEP’s independence. That is important as well.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Will the Minister give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

May I just finish? Any guidance must also be laid before Parliament and published. That means that the process will be transparent, and the Secretary of State will ultimately be accountable to Parliament.

There are precedents elsewhere in legislation for this type of approach. For example, the Climate Change Act 2007 provides for the Secretary of State to give guidance to the Committee on Climate Change—a body that is considered to be highly effective and independent.

[Daniel Zeichner]

This is very important, and it came as a surprise to many of us that the Government are introducing it as an amendment. Will the Minister explain why it was not in the Bill originally? What was the process that led to the introduction of these amendments?

[Rebecca Pow]

As usual, much debate and discussion went on. It is all about transparency and clarity for the OEP—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is raising his eyebrows. The Opposition are always seeking to suggest that there is something underhand going on, but I wear my heart on my sleeve, and this is all in the interests of transparency. There is a whole flowchart about how the OEP will remain independent. Schedule 1(17) sets out that the Secretary of State must be aware of the independence of the OEP. It is about giving much more clarity and focus to the way that the OEP will operate.

Amendment 221 is a consequential amendment to schedule 3, which provides an option to extend the OEP’s funtions to apply to devolved matters in the future. As the functions conferred by schedule 3 are devolved, the amendment ensures that, if schedule 3 comes into force, any guidance issued under new clause 24 will not apply to those devolved functions. Amendment 221 is therefore necessary to ensure that new clause 24 is compatible with the devolution settlement in Northern Ireland. It leaves the Government the flexibility to assist the OEP through guidance if ever necessary while ensuring that it remains an independent enforcement body. In the light of that, amendment 221 is essential to ensuring that new clause 24 is compatible with the devolution settlement for Northern Ireland.

[Dr Whitehead]

I do not have any great objections to this clause, but we should reflect on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge. It is a bit shocking that this proposal was not in the Bill previously. This section is about ensuring that the OEP is set up and functions well in Northern Ireland, with all the issues that go with devolved government and the replication of its functions in the Province. Yet the ability to transfer functions on a devolved basis appears not to have occurred to the framers of the Bill before it was put before us. It is only after what in this context we might call the fortunate suspension of the Bill for quite a long time that it has been possible to reflect on that omission and this amendment appears before us. That is a bit concerning, in terms of what else in the Bill might not do justice particularly to the devolution settlements. That is a worry, but we are not worried about the actual content that has appeared. Therefore, we do not want to divide the Committee on this amendment.

Amendment 221 agreed to.

Amendment made: 67, in schedule 3, page 148, line 18, leave out

“the National Assembly for Wales”

and insert “Senedd Cymru”. —(Rebecca Pow.)

Environment Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 13th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

There are two things on which I want to reflect. We must remember that the schedule concerns the Northern Ireland function of the Office for Environmental Protection, and should effectively provide the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly with a reasonable replica of what is required to set up the OEP in England and Wales. At the same time, it should provide for substantial reporting and discretion to the Assembly by the OEP.

A particular concern, about which I hope the Minister will reflect and respond, is that that replication of the OEP’s operation for its Northern Ireland function is not as close as it could be. Amendment 194, which was tabled by the hon. Members for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) and for Foyle (Colum Eastwood), who both represent constituencies in Northern Ireland, was discussed earlier as part of a debate on a group of amendments, so we did not actually discuss its content. I draw the Committee’s attention to the effect that amendment would have on the OEP in Northern Ireland: it sought essentially to provide a mechanism for long-term and interim targets.

That mechanism was the same as the one for the OEP response to targets set out in clauses 1 to 6. Although there is reference to those targets in general, it is very different from clause 1. Indeed, it does not include, for example, achievement measures and does not specifically discuss interim targets. That could have been resolved with the amendment, as the formulation is different from the one for England and Wales. I wonder whether that has arisen by commission or omission. Was the Government’s intention that there should be different arrangements relating to targets and interim targets for England and Wales and for Northern Ireland? Was their intention that the OEP should have different responsibilities towards targets in Northern Ireland? That is the first concern.

The second concern relates to the formulation of the requirement for Ministers to lay before Parliament the notices and legal actions that the OEP has introduced in respect of environmental law and environmental protection. Hon. Members will see that there is a repetition of our earlier debate about what we characterised as a particularly egregious “may” and “must” issue. Clause 3(6), on page 134 of the Bill states:

“The Northern Ireland department concerned may, if it thinks fit, lay before the Northern Ireland Assembly— (a) the advice, and (b) any response that department may make to the advice.”

Hon. Members will recall that is exactly what we debated, and whether the Minister responsible might decide that he or she would lay something before Parliament or, on the other hand, they might decide that they would not lay something before Parliament, and that was the end of that. We expressed concern about what we thought was a very poor formulation, as far as the UK Parliament was concerned, when we discussed the relevant amendment.

In the first instance, it looks as if that formulation is simply being repeated as far as the OEP and the Minister are concerned, in Northern Ireland, but there is a difference: it is not the Minister who may lay something before the Northern Ireland Assembly if he or she sees fit, but the Northern Ireland Department. I am puzzled by that formulation. How it is possible for an entire Department to think that something is fit, or not? In the formulation used in the England and Wales version, there is a person—the Minister—who must decide whether or not it is fit. We criticised the potential actions of that person in not thinking that something was fit.

I am puzzled about how this will work. Someone, somewhere, may or may not decide to lay something before the Northern Ireland Assembly. That is okay as far as it goes, but we do not like the idea of “may or may not”. However, I do not think what we are considering is a particularly easy legal concept: not only an entire Department thinking fit, but an entire Department thinking at all. The formulation that the Department “thinks fit” would require an entire Department to decide something, and an entire Department then to decide whether what it thought fit would be laid before the Northern Ireland Assembly.

There is no identified person at any stage in this to whom the Northern Ireland Assembly say,  “We would rather you had put that in front of us. Why have you not, and why did you not think it was fit to put that in front of us?” Instead, they presumably have to knock on the door of the UK’s Northern Ireland Office and ask to speak to someone who could shed some light on that, then pursue how that thinking and fitness came about in the corridors of that Office.

That seems to be a very strange formulation. Can the Minister elucidate whether that means that an individual, one way or another, is responsible in the Northern Ireland Office and can be identified and can take the responsibility for thinking fit or otherwise? Or is it just a formulation that is so legally opaque as to make it virtually unworkable? If that is the case, would the Minister think about taking that away and thinking again about how the provision is formulated as far as Northern Ireland is concerned?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

I want to be clear that, as part of our dual commitment to a strong Union and protecting and enhancing the natural environment, the Northern Ireland Executive have asked us to extend certain aspects of our new environmental governance framework to Northern Ireland, subject to affirmation from the Assembly. A great deal of discussion has gone into that, and the Executive asked for that. I want to be clear about that. They do not believe it is clouded in opaqueness, because they have been fully engaged.

Schedule 3 provides an option to extend the OEP’s functions to apply to devolved matters in Northern Ireland in the future, should the Assembly decide to do so. That is important. The shadow Minister touched on targets, but we voted on that earlier in schedule 2, so I do not think that is necessarily relevant to what we are talking about now.

The provisions in part 1 of schedule 3 will provide the OEP with powers in Northern Ireland broadly equivalent to those in England. For example, the OEP will be able to monitor and report on the implementation of Northern Irish environmental law, much as it would be able to do in England under clause 26. Similarly, schedule 3 provides for the extension of the OEP’s enforcement functions to Northern Ireland, taking into account the two nations’ different court systems. Part 2 will provide for the OEP to adapt its operating procedures appropriately if extended to cover devolved matters in Northern Ireland, and amends the general functions of the OEP so they may adequately apply to Northern Ireland. For example, part 2 ensures appropriate Northern Ireland representation on the OEP board and ensures that the OEP’s remit covers Northern Irish environmental law. Schedule 3 is essential to ensure the extension of the OEP to Northern Ireland should the Assembly decide to do that. I hope that I have made that quite clear.

[Dr Whitehead]

I do not think the Minister has clarified what paragraph 3(6) of schedule 3 means. I offered a possible interpretation of what that clause meant—it appears to say that an entire Department is responsible for thinking, and for thinking something fit. I assume that the entire Department that is mentioned in the provision is the Northern Ireland Department concerned, so that, as the Minister said, should these matters proceed properly towards devolution, there will be—she said that there has been, as I anticipated there should have been— extensive discussion with the devolved Administration in Northern Ireland on how this will work and what it means, and that a substantial part of this process is at their request. It is important to understand, since we are making legislation here for that to work there, what this actually means. I assume that it does not mean that the UK Northern Ireland Office is responsible, if it thinks fit, for laying before the Northern Assembly—

[Rebecca Pow]

First, I want to clarify the fact that the decision to commence provisions to extend the OEP to devolved matters to Northern Ireland is a matter for Northern Ireland Ministers and for affirmation by the Assembly. I also want to point out that it is common practice for Northern Ireland to confer powers on a Department. Departmental functions are exercised subject to the direction and control of the departmental Minister, as set out in the Departments (Northern Ireland) Order 1999.

[Dr Whitehead]

I thank the Minister for that. That is very helpful. If it is the case that a Department, in Northern Ireland practice, effectively takes its cue for these things from the Minister in the Department that is responsible, that potentially answers my particular question. I have not heard that before, but it would be good if we could be assured that that is what will happen in practice once that goes into devolution—that there will be a person responsible for thinking fit, namely, the Minister in that Department.

[Rebecca Pow]

I will intervene again and give those assurances. I send a great many letters to my counterpart in that Department. We have a lot of toing and froing, so the hon. Gentleman can be assured that there is a lot of communication. We want it to work for Northern Ireland the way that they want it to work

[Dr Whitehead]

Absolutely, and that is what we want to do as well. That is why we want to ensure that it works as well as it should. It appears, I hope, that this formulation, strange as it looks, is capable of being operated in a sound way, as far as the Assembly is concerned for the future, and that people will not be running around corridors asking a building to think, but running around corridors asking the Minister to think, which is what I thought should have been in the Bill. If it works that way round, that is fine. I thank the Minister for her clarification. I have no intention of opposing the schedule.

Question put and agreed to.

Schedule 3, as amended, accordingly agreed to.

Clause 47 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 4

Producer responsibility obligations

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 16, in schedule 4, page 151, line 12, leave out “may” and insert “must”.

It is still a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, even though we are not mentioning that. It is lovely to have the Minister back in her rightful place. The Environment Bill is very important and long overdue, as we have heard. I want to touch on the reason we are here, what we are dealing with, and how we can honour the pledges and promises made to the people of the United Kingdom, primarily in England.

The Bill, according to the Government’s published paper, comprises two thematic halves. The first provides a legal framework for environmental governance, which my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test so knowledgably touched on this morning and last week. The second half of the Bill makes provision for specific improvement of the environment, including measures on waste and resource efficiency, which we are discussing today. In the coming days, we will cover air quality and environmental recall; water; nature and biodiversity; and conservation covenants. They will all be discussed. We need to get the Bill right to ensure that we honour the promise to provide a once-in-a-generation piece of legislation—a promise that the Minister and many Government Members heralded at every opportunity, at least until the Bill disappeared back in March. It is so good to have it back.

That is why Her Majesty’s Opposition have tabled this amendment. We must not have a Bill that is made up of passive “mays” or “coulds”; we need “wills” and “musts”. Many in this House and across England, and those in the sector, have waited hundreds of days for the missing-in-action Bill. Now that it is back and we are here in Committee, we must not waste—I apologise for the pun—the opportunity to have the strongest possible legislation, so we have tabled the amendment.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for proposing the amendment. I also welcome her taking up the cudgels—perhaps I should say something less aggressive.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

The baton.

[Rebecca Pow]

Yes, taking up the baton on behalf of the Opposition. May I assure the hon. Member for Newport West that the Government have every intention of making regulations using schedule 4? The Bill creates producer responsibility obligations in respect of specified products or materials. That is one of a number of provisions that will enable us to take action significantly to improve the environmental performance of products across their entire life cycle—from the raw material used, to end-of-life management. Other powers in the Bill include our ability in schedule 5 to require producers to pay disposal costs for their products; our powers in schedule 6 to introduce deposit return schemes; and the powers in schedule 7 to set resource efficiency standards in relation to the design and lifetime of products.

The Government need the flexibility to decide what measures will best deliver the outcomes that we want. Imposing producer responsibility obligations in all cases may not be appropriate. The power is drafted in a way that gives us the flexibility to choose the appropriate measure or combination of measures for any product, and to decide which producers are obligated, the obligations on them, and the steps that they need to take to demonstrate that they have met their obligations.

In this instance, we will use these powers to introduce new regulations for producer packaging responsibility. That will increase the reuse and recycling of packaging and reduce the use of unnecessary and avoidable packaging. In 2019, we consulted with the devolved Administrations on proposals to reform the regulations, and we will consult again in 2021, so it is a lengthy process, but a lot of discussion has informed this. In the resources and waste strategy for England, we made commitments relating to updating our already up-and-running producer responsibility schemes on waste electricals, waste batteries and end-of-life vehicles; these powers are needed to implement those commitments. We also committed to taking action to address food waste.

Products vary. They have different supply chains, use different materials and have different impacts on the environment. That is why we need to be able to introduce product-specific regulations, using the appropriate powers. This power provides the flexibility to impose producer responsibility obligations where it is appropriate to do so, and that flexibility would be removed by the amendment. I therefore ask the hon. Member to kindly withdraw it.

[Ruth Jones]

I thank the Minister for her comments. I take the point about flexibility; in my previous job as a physiotherapist, however, we had both flexibility and control. Splints and corsets were very useful in ensuring flexibility in confined areas. That is why the “mays” should be turned into “musts”. The grammar is important to us. But I take the point, and this is a probing amendment, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I welcome the intention behind the schedule, which is to shift the burden of disposal costs from local authorities and the taxpayer to producers; the burden on them has historically been too low. I also welcome the shift in this Bill towards tackling food waste. I have been campaigning on this in Wandsworth borough for many years, and to see that it will be in the legislation and has to be addressed by the council is very welcome. However, in some ways, the drafting is too loose; as often in this Bill, it needs some tightening up, and I hope that these Labour amendments will be useful in doing that.

In terms of virgin materials, it is not good enough to focus on the end-of-life solutions for materials. The schemes introduced under this schedule need to incentivise producers to make the right decisions at the start of the process, as well as ensuring that they fulfil environmental responsibilities at the end. As the UK Environmental Law Association recommends, the Government need to clearly signal that extended producer responsibility covers the full life cycle, not only waste disposal. Reducing virgin material use is key to this, and to the Bill being as ambitious as we want it to be. Amendment 158 adds some words to ensure this.

Virgin materials include timber, plastic resin derived from the petroleum refining process and mined materials. This amendment would ensure that the producer responsibility scheme considers upstream measures that tackle consumption and production as well as waste minimisation. Although waste minimisation is important, it is not sufficient by itself to guarantee a reduction in virgin material use. Without adding this amendment, we cannot be sure the outcome will be the reduction that we need to see.

Manufacturing products with virgin materials usually requires much more energy and depletes more natural resources than using recycled materials, so when we reduce their use, there is also an offset for other processes. Action to reduce usage of virgin materials is essential to tackle overall depletion.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for her interest in this provision and for this amendment. I reassure her and the Committee that the amendment is not needed.

Reducing the consumption of virgin materials is important; we all agree on that. In our 25-year environment plan, we stated our long-term ambition of doubling resource productivity by 2050. That is about maximising the value and benefits we get from our resources, and managing these resources more sustainably to reduce associated environmental impacts.

I can assure the hon. Member for Putney that we are tackling this issue in the Bill. We have powers in schedule 5 to require producers to pay the disposal costs of the products or materials they place on the market, and for these costs to be varied according to the design or consumption of the products. Through the costs that producers pay, they can be incentivised to design and manufacture products that use fewer materials, that include more recycled materials, and are much easier to recycle and break down, so that the parts can be reused elsewhere.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

In my constituency, as in many others, I suspect, there is often difficulty getting recycling plants put in. I completely agree with the Bill’s intention to shift the cost to producers. However, what proposals are there to get recycling plants and places to process the waste, paid for by the producers, put in the right places? One could spend all the money one likes, but if there is nowhere to get the waste recycled, it cannot be recycled.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend. He touches on the crux of the matter. This is all-encompassing. We are driving towards what we call a circular economy. That is the purpose of the measures on waste and resources. They will ensure consistent collections, though we have not got on to that yet, and require products to be more recyclable, but we will need them to be collected and recycled. That will drive the demand for those plants to be established in the right place. Things will join up much better than they do today. That is what the measures in the Bill are all about. I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important point. This should make the whole procedure a more complete circle.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Do the Government intend to invest in some of those recycling centres, or is the intention to leave it to the private sector to fill that need? That is a topic I have been pursuing lately and I am interested to hear the Minister’s views.

[Rebecca Pow]

That topic is not referenced in the Bill. Those are issues relating to how the regulations will work when it comes to producer responsibility and deposit return. Local authorities will still play a huge role, but the great point is that they will not be responsible for all the costs any more. What is brilliant is that the costs will be shifted on to the businesses. They will then be forced to design products that are much easier to recycle. That brings us again to the circular economy. I thank the hon. Lady for raising another good point.

The measures will help us to tackle waste from the beginning of the life cycle, and complement measures elsewhere in the Bill that support the later stages of that cycle. There are also powers in schedule 7 that will allow resource efficiency requirements to be placed on specified products. Those requirements will relate to factors such as the materials from which the product is manufactured, and the resources consumed during its production. For instance, thinking off the top of my head, one could say that clothing or textiles must contain a certain amount of recycled fibre. There could be a requirement to use fewer virgin materials or more recycled materials in the manufacture of the product.

I am pleased that the hon. Member for Putney welcomes the schedule. It is great to have that positivity, and I applaud her work on food waste. It is very exciting that it will become law for food waste to be collected. That will be an important part of the Bill, because while some local authorities, such as mine in Taunton Deane, do collect it, loads do not. Much of it ends up in landfill, giving off emissions. We could make so much better use of it, and could focus attention on how much food waste is produced, which is frankly shocking.

[Dr Whitehead]

Is the Minister’s example of requiring a certain proportion of textiles to include recycled materials now a policy?

[The Chair]

In the context of this amendment, Minister.

[Rebecca Pow]

I was just giving a random example, off the top of my head. I do not see any policies written here. Is the hon. Gentleman trying to catch me out?

[Dr Whitehead]

I was hoping it was going to be policy.

[Rebecca Pow]

The measures are the kind of thing that will open up the doors to all those opportunities.

[The Chair]

If it is any comfort to the Minister, she was deviating slightly from the content of the amendment.

[Rebecca Pow]

I was, and I thought the Chairman was going to interrupt me when I mentioned all the food.

Finally, schedule 4 allows us to set obligations on producers in relation to reuse, redistribution, recovery and recycling. All that will contribute to a more resource-efficient economy. For those reasons, I ask the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment.

[Ruth Jones]

I am grateful for the Minister’s reassurance, in which she stressed the importance of the cyclical nature of the production of goods. We must break the cycle of new, new, new. I am risking the wrath of the Chair, but when I sat on the Environmental Audit Committee, we had an investigation and report into the throwaway nature of the fashion industry; that is very relevant to the Bill.

I thank the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden, my hon. Friend the Member for Putney and the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith for mentioning the importance of recycling centres. There is no point in everyone sorting their recycling at home if there is nowhere to recycle things. That is an important part of the process, which is why we will press after the legislation is enacted to ensure that happens. Having received the Minister’s reassurance, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

My hon. Friend, as always, makes an important point about what is and is not in the legislation. I would expect him to have similar views about other words. It seems plain to me that if the waste hierarchy is to be adopted, all the components of that hierarchy must be in the description. They are not there, and I cannot speculate on why not. It may be that those who drafted the Bill were not fully aware of the waste White Paper when they sat down late at night to write that passage. If they were not, they should have been. The amendment would offer an opportunity to rectify that omission. We are not suggesting that there was any malevolent intention; perhaps it is just an omission. I hope the Minister can oblige us by ensuring that the words sit proudly in the Bill, alongside Government policy.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for Newport West for the proposed amendment. Although I recognise the intentions behind it, I must disagree with it. She pressed the Government to be as ambitious as possible, and I assure her that we are being ambitious. I am delighted that we think in the same way in wanting the highest ambition; I like to think that we are as one on that.

I do not believe we need the amendment. The power, as drafted, already allows us to place obligations, including targets, on producers to prevent waste or to reduce the amount of a product or material that becomes waste. Paragraph 2(2) gives examples of how targets may be set. They include, but are not limited to, the setting of targets to increase the proportion of a product or material that is reused, redistributed, recycled or recovered to prevent it from becoming waste. Those examples do not prevent the powers in schedule 4 from being used to set targets in relation to preventing waste from being produced, or reducing the amount of waste that is produced.

Producer responsibility obligations could be set as targets to incentivise producers to prevent or reduce waste, but they do not have to be set only as targets. We can all get a bit hung up on targets. Targets are important, but we could use the powers, for example, to require producers to take specific action to tackle waste, such as by requiring retailers to take back products. There is a lot of work in this space in the area of electronic waste, where department stores are expected to take back products. Another possibility could be single-use cups, once they have been used. Obligations such as this should create a strong incentive to create less waste in the first place: I think we are all agreed that that is what we are driving towards.

The hon. Member for Putney made a similar case about the circular economy. I applaud her work on nappies; I was one of those mothers. I have three children, and—this was a long time ago, when people were not talking about this sort of thing—with my first child, I used only washable nappies. Can you imagine, Mr Gray, how much work that was? Oh my goodness—not to mention the smell! I am not digressing, because this is all relevant. I was a news reporter at the time, and I interviewed a lady who had set up a business making these nappies, so I thought, “I am going to use those.” In fact, I think I used my child allowance support to pay for them. That was what I had decided I would do, but it was a labour of love.

The point is that through all these measures in the Bill, manufacturers of any product will be driven to think about what is in it. For example, are nappies made of recycled material? Do they have recycled content? Could they be reused? Are they washable? The Bill will drive everyone to think like that.

[Dr Whitehead]

If they made nappy pins that did not stab the baby.

[Rebecca Pow]

Did the shadow Minister use washable nappies for his children?

[Dr Whitehead]

I did indeed, absolutely.

[Rebecca Pow]

Did he?

The hon. Member for Putney also raised an important point about garden waste. We have now legislated for garden waste to be collected: that is in clause 54.

I also wanted to give a quick résumé about the life cycle issue that the hon. Member for Southampton, Test touched on. He mentioned the waste hierarchy, which is basically driving towards a circular economy. That is the driving force of the resources and waste strategy, and it is the intention behind the Bill. I will whizz through the related measures in the Bill, which are about raw material, extraction and manufacturing.

The resource efficiency requirement power enables standards to be set that relate to the materials and techniques used by manufacturers, such as specifying the minimum amount of recycled fibre in clothing, as we mentioned earlier. The resource efficiency information power will drive the market by providing consumers and businesses with the information they need to make sustainable choices. I can see my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester looking at me; in order for him to be able to make the right choices, he wants to know how sustainable a product is, so that he can buy that one as opposed to another one. There will be more information and more labelling.

On end of life, the resource efficiency powers can be used to specify that products are designed so that when they reach end of life, they can easily be dismantled—exactly as the hon. Member for Southampton, Test has outlined—and the materials can be recovered and recycled. Our powers for deposit return, extended producer responsibility and recycling collections would enable better management of products and materials at the end of life. That will increase reuse and recycling, and it will reduce the amount of material that is incinerated or landfilled.

Preventing waste from being created in the first place and reducing the amount of waste that is produced is a priority for the Government. That is why we have stated our ambition to achieve zero avoidable waste by 2050. We will do this though the measures set out in the resources and waste strategy—we seek the powers for some of those in this Bill—and through other initiatives such as the new waste prevention programme, which we hope to publish and consult on in the near future. On all those grounds, I ask the hon. Member for Newport West if she might withdraw her amendment.

[Ruth Jones]

What an enlightening debate we have had. In terms of one-upmanship, dare I say it, my hon. Friend the Member for Putney has managed reusable nappies for four children. This debate has been useful, and it is good to have all the ideas, because only by putting all our heads together can we make this Environment Bill ground-breaking. We want it to work, and that is why our amendments are designed to help, not to hinder.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test made the important point that as well as recycling, the reusing of goods, parts and components is crucial. People want to do the right thing. Since programmes such as “Blue Planet” have come along, people are much more aware of pollution and how they can play their part. They want to do the right thing, and this Bill must make it easy for them to do so.

The Minister mentioned garden waste. At the risk of blowing Wales’s trumpet, Wales already has a successful garden waste scheme—in fact, recycling rates in Wales are very high—so perhaps she can look across the border. She also mentioned targets. If we do not have targets, how do we know if we are getting to the end of the road? How will we know if we are improving unless we set targets in the first place? We should set targets not to be punitive, but to help us to assess our progress; that is why they are important. We believe that the amendment is also important, so we will press it to a Division.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Lady for the amendment, but I reassure her and the Committee that it is not needed. Paragraph 11(2) provides the ability to specify in regulations the activities that count as recovery. That means that the way in which energy is to be obtained from a product or material can be specified in regulations. The power is designed to be flexible, given the broad range of possible products on which we may decide to impose producer responsibility obligations. I reassure her that in making any regulations, it would be our intention to impose regulations on producers in relation to options higher up the waste hierarchy, such as prevention, reuse and recycling—all the things that we discussed earlier—as a first priority. In simple terms, it means that we will be encouraging the prevention, reuse and recycling of waste over energy recovery. I therefore ask her to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Jones]

I beg to move amendment 17, in schedule 5, page 157, line 9, leave out “may” and insert “must”.

Earlier this afternoon, I noted how important the Bill is and how we need to ensure that it receives thorough scrutiny, so that it is as strong and coherent as it can be. With that in mind, we need to do what I urged the Committee to do earlier: get the Bill right, so that we honour and meet the promise of a once-in-a-generation piece of legislation. I remind the Minister that she and her colleagues heralded that promise at every opportunity, until the Bill disappeared in March, only to return now.

That is why we are proposing the amendment. As I noted with amendment 16 to schedule 4, we must not rest on our laurels. We cannot have a Bill that is simply made up of passive and weak “mays” and “coulds”; we need the “wills” and “musts”. The fact that we have waited so long, listening to campaigners and those active in the sector, means that we cannot waste the opportunity to deliver a strong, wide-ranging and competent piece of legislation.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Lady for her amendment, but I reassure her that we feel it is not needed. The Government need the flexibility—I have mentioned this before—to decide what measures will best deliver the outcomes we want to see achieved. Requiring producers to pay disposal costs in all cases might not be the appropriate option.

The power is drafted to give flexibility to choose the appropriate measure, or combination of measures, for any product. It also gives us the flexibility to decide for which products or materials producers must pay disposal costs, the producers who must pay the disposal costs, the costs that they must pay and what those costs should be.

At this point, I will take a step back to reflect on what the measures will actually mean. The powers will allow us to create a strong financial incentive for businesses to do the right thing. I have spoken with businesses, and of course they want strong signals, because without them they will not be inclined to invest, innovate or go in the direction that we want them to go. That is so important.

The measures will encourage producers such as supermarkets to reduce the packaging they use in their products, so that less waste is produced. Everybody will start thinking about their products and their packaging, because they have to be responsible for what happens to it at the end of the day. It would be in the best interests of manufacturers to make products that are more reusable and recyclable. Thinking back to nappies, if they are to be reusable or rewashable, they could contain recycled fabric—in fact, that is a jolly good idea, and someone is probably already doing it. That is just an example. Such decisions should all have sustainability in mind, and the customers will see that—with the new labelling and all the information—in the products that they buy.

I can therefore reassure the hon. Member for Newport West that the Government have every intention of making regulations using schedule 5. The resources and waste strategy also commits us to reviewing and consulting on measures, including extended producer responsibility for five other waste streams by the end of 2025. Those five include textiles, construction materials and fishing gear. Along with the other products in that list, they have all been highlighted as urgent areas that could do with this kind of focus.

We need to retain the flexibility to introduce product-specific regulations using the appropriate powers, and as drafted, this power provides the flexibility to impose extended producer responsibility obligations where it is appropriate to do so. I hope that is helpful, and I therefore ask the hon. Lady whether she might withdraw her amendment.

[Ruth Jones]

I thank the Minister for her words, and respectfully say that strong signals sometimes need to be backed up with strong words, which is why we wanted to amend the wording of the schedule to “must”, not “may”. However, that point having been made again, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

First, I thank the hon. Member for Newport West for withdrawing her previous amendment and not pushing it to a vote. I thank her for her consideration of this particular amendment, but I would like to reassure her and the Committee that I do not believe it is necessary.

The hon. Lady is absolutely right: it is important that as a society we monitor and address social issues relating to the manufacture of products and materials. In the UK, we address them through legislation, such as the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Human Rights Act 1998. Other initiatives, such as the United Nations’ International Labour Organisation and the Forest Stewardship Council, look to tackle those issues on a global scale.

However, the core focus of extended producer responsibility is to encourage producers to take actions that will help to protect and improve the environment, including paying the costs of managing products at the end of their life and improving the design of products to make them recyclable or increase the amount of recycled material that they contain—all the things that we have mentioned previously. Recycling rates will then increase and the supply of secondary material will increase.

I will quickly address the issue that the hon. Lady touched on about Sri Lanka. I just want to highlight that it is a manifesto commitment, which we will implement through this Bill, to ban all exports of plastic waste to non-OECD countries. That is in clause 59, I think—I cannot read my writing. I have terrible writing.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister, because this is very important and the hon. Member for Newport West was right to raise it. Those of us who have responsibilities as trade envoys are very conscious of some of the damage done to relationships with overseas countries, particularly Commonwealth countries, where waste has effectively been dumped by local councils. That is partly due to the supply chain for waste disposal. Does the Minister agree that this Bill will make real steps forward in tackling that problem?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue. The hon. Member for Putney touched on litter, and I was going to say that this is a very wide subject—waste, hazardous waste, export of waste, litter—and clauses 60 to 68 deal with a whole lot of those issues, so we will discuss them at length when we get to them. However, we are mindful of what my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester says, and there are measures in the Bill to really get to grips with some of those things, which are rightly important, especially for our global standing, as he says with his trade envoy hat on. I know he does such great work representing us, so I thank him for that.

I must disagree with the hon. Member for Southampton, Test about words being mangled. The only thing that we want mangled is the waste, so that we can take it apart and turn it into something else. I completely disagree that the words have been mangled by those who have so carefully drafted the legislation. I will highlight the fact that the extended producer responsibility scheme and the requirements to cover the full net disposal costs of their products and materials when they become waste will encourage producers to make these changes that we all want to the design and the materials that will have an impact on the whole supply chain. That is the purpose of all this. That will then increase the supply of materials for recycling and the quality of material for recycling, by reducing contamination and the use of hard-to-recycle products and materials. The whole circular system will be dealt with, so I take issue with his mangling suggestion.

At the end of the day, our supply chains will be strengthened in secondary materials, which is so important that we will then give investors the signal and the confidence they need to invest in our UK recycling industry, so we can put the recycling units that my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden mentioned everywhere they are required and companies such as Coca-Cola can have all the PET plastic they want to make all the bottles they would like to make from good-quality recycled plastic. It is difficult to get hold of enough of many those things now, but when we get these measures in place, the idea is that it will all be sorted out. I can see the hon. Member for Cambridge smiling at me, but I know he knows that I am on the right track.

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend the Minister made a good point about making sure that the costs to the private sector involved in helping us recycle more come to a level at which it is important for them to invest. The fringe benefits from that are massive. Many of the recycling centres that previously sent waste to landfill are now available for all sorts of green energy projects including solar, hydrogen and onshore wind. It will make a huge difference in my constituency of Gloucester, so I am grateful for what she says about how the Bill will help that.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning his constituency and for raising that important point about how we need to get business on board, and how we need to give the right signals and get the right things to happen to move us to the circular economy. At the end of the day, we want less waste landfilled or incinerated, less litter and a decrease in the use of virgin raw materials. These outcomes bring wider social benefits —touching on amendment 17—as they improve the environment for the public and for wildlife. They also reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For all of these reasons, the measures in the Environment Bill are strong enough as they stand, and it follows that social issues such as poor conditions for workers are considered outside the scope of extended producer responsibility. I ask the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment.

[Ruth Jones]

I thank the Minister for her explanation and I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Putney for highlighting the issues of litter and fly-tipping, which really vex people. My inbox is full of complaints about such issues as are, I am sure, those of most Members here if their constituency is anything like mine. It is important that the quality of people’s environment is enhanced and made as good as possible. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test: as he points out, the wording is important. People outside these walls do not fully understand what the Bill is trying to say: the word “disposal”—as he says—is in the dictionary and it means getting rid of something, but we want to make sure that we have a cyclical economy. We come back to making sure that words matter.

I was pleased to hear the Minister highlight the manifesto pledge not to dump rubbish in non-OECD countries. It raises the issue of whether it will go to OECD countries, but that is obviously important. I was also pleased to hear COP26 raised. It is important that the UK sets a shining example to the rest of the world on that, and that is why we are pushing amendment 17: it is so important that we make sure we get it right at this stage so that, as has been mentioned, future generations look back on the Environment Bill with pride. We will be seeking to divide the Committee.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

Yes.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for his amendment. He is trying at every opportunity to sneak in a “must”, but we share the sentiment and recognise the importance of taking action to improve the design of products—that is what this is all about—including by mandating the provision of information relating to resource efficiency on products. Given the pace of change and the need for flexibility in deciding where regulation is necessary, however, it is not appropriate to insert a requirement that we must take such action across the board for all products, nor to specify a list in advance. Our intention is to use this power to set resource efficiency information requirements where they will give the greatest impact. I can reassure the hon. Member that we are committed to doing that.

I am pleased that the first anticipated use of the information power will mandate labelling to show the recyclability of packaging, which I know is a source of stress for many households, including my own. In fact, I go absolutely berserk if I get home and find that my children have gone to a shop where everything is in packets, instead of buying it loose. Labelling and clear messaging about the damage that some packaging can do would get the message through.

The Government are considering how we should implement these measures beyond packaging, and we want to ensure that, where requirements for more information are introduced, it will have significant positive impacts on the environment. We expect that some industries will be motivated to proactively settle or improve their standards for products. Where industry does not, however, these powers will enable us to set mandatory requirements in future. It has to be said that lots of supermarkets are already looking at what they can do to reduce their packaging, which is to be welcomed.

For those reasons, it is appropriate to take regulation-making powers, rather than impose a duty on the Government to set standards. Primary legislation consistently takes such an approach to the balance of powers—what may be done; a duty is what must be done—and this power is no different. This approach will provide sufficient flexibility to implement or modify requirements at different times for different products, and within a reasonable timespan. Additionally, it will facilitate the making of separate provisions for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland should the devolved Administrations wish to exercise this power.

On those grounds, I ask the hon. Member whether she would kindly withdraw the amendment.

[The Chair]

Dr Whitehead moved the amendment.

[Rebecca Pow]

I am sorry. I ask the hon. Gentleman to kindly withdraw the amendment.

[Dr Whitehead]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I am very happy to discuss the amendment in the circumstances outlined by the Chair, and I thank the hon. Member for Southampton, Test for tabling it. The Government recognise the value of providing consumers with information on the expected lifecycle and environmental impact of products. The amendment is not necessary, because the powers in the Bill already allow for that. Indeed, I hope that it is clear from everything we have been talking about that it is the whole lifecycle of the product that will be the key thing once the measures in the Bill are in place.

The resource efficiency powers set out in the Bill enable us to achieve the amendment’s goal. However, the current drafting allows us to provide greater clarity on the aspects of a product’s lifecycle that can be covered, in recognition of what it is practicable and feasible to require. The schedule covers the scope of the powers in relation to lifecycle impacts, including production processes, pollution impact during production, use and disposal, product lifetime and related aspects such as recyclability. There is a broad and comprehensive list of what consumer information could be about. It provides the scope for meaningful and specific provisions relevant to a product’s impact on the natural environment without placing overly complex or impractical requirements on manufacturers.

We want this to be simple for manufacturers and to help consumers make the right choices. It is a two-pronged attack: we want manufacturers to do the right thing, but they need to be able to do it, and we want to give the consumers the information to make the right choices. For example, we could require that items of clothing are sold with information about the resources used to make them, as well as about the pollution—for example, greenhouse gas emissions—arising from a garment’s production, use and disposal. All of those things could be possible. Customers, should they wish, could then use that information to choose products that have less impact on the environment across their life cycle.

I know from talking to people who watch the Attenborough documentaries, and others, that they know about the horrific impacts and consequences of the products they buy. They do not want that to happen, so the information and labelling will really help, as will the whole new life cycle approach that this Bill will introduce. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Southampton, Test to withdraw the amendment, given that the current provisions already do what it suggests.

[Dr Whitehead]

I am encouraged by the Minister’s response, although I am not sure that the wording is exactly as it should be. I, like, I suspect, her, am very taken by the idea of a backpack on a product. For example, if a pen has a gold nib—unfortunately, my pen has a steel nib, but there we are—it would have a substantial backpack outlining the cost of mining that gold and the amount of resources used, such as oil, in getting the gold out. Everything would have a backpack: some products would have huge backpacks, while others would have smaller ones. I take on board the Minister’s comments. The aim is to start talking about those backpacks and how we relate to products. The life cycle information relates to not just what is in the backpack but how far the backpack has travelled.

[Rebecca Pow]

This whole subject is interesting. “Product passport” is another term that could cover all that detail. The Bill will also allow us to introduce labelling requirements relating to water use and carbon footprint, so it will open up a wealth of opportunities in the space that the shadow Minister is talking about.

[Dr Whitehead]

Indeed. That is absolutely right: “passport” is another good way to describe it, although only a limited number of things can be jammed in a passport, whereas rather more things can be jammed in a backpack. The principle, however, is exactly the same, and I am encouraged to hear the Minister speaking of it in that particular way. I do not, therefore, wish to push the amendment to a vote and hope that what the Minister has said is how the schedule will be interpreted in future. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Schedule 6 agreed to.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Leo Docherty.)

Independent Review of Insurance

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2020 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

On 27 December 2019 the then Secretary of State, my right hon. the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), commissioned an independent review following the severe flooding in South Yorkshire in November 2019. The River Don recorded its highest ever peak flows at Rotherham and Doncaster, with South Yorkshire experiencing its wettest November on record—seeing over two and a half times its average rainfall and over 760 properties reported as having flooded.

This independent review has been led by Amanda Blanc, former chair of the Association of British Insurers (ABI) who was appointed on 14 April 2020 and was supported by BMG Research. Amanda Blanc has provided me with a comprehensive report that sets out her findings into why some residents of Doncaster did not have sufficient insurance cover, and in some cases no insurance at all. Where necessary, it considers and makes recommendations for action to mitigate the impact of future flood events. Full terms of reference for the review can be found on gov.uk: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/flood-insurance-review-2020-blanc-review

I would like to thank Amanda for her investigation and recommendations, which the Government will now consider.

Report findings

This report sets out the findings of the review in relation to the level of insurance cover held by those affected in Doncaster, the barriers they may have faced in obtaining cover and whether there are any systemic issues in the provision of flood insurance.

The report identifies that 95% of homeowners were able to confirm that they had both buildings and contents insurance. This compares with 94% of households at risk of flooding in DEFRA’s national 2018 survey looking at the availability and affordability of flood insurance. I am pleased that this shows the sustained availability of home insurance for homeowners especially in this area of high flood risk. However, among homeowners who had insurance, 6% of buildings insurance policies did not cover flooding, and 7% of contents insurance policies did not cover flooding.

The report also found that there were significant differences between the insurance cover held by homeowners and tenants, and that

“owner-occupiers were generally far better protected than renters”.

While tenants are responsible for arranging their contents insurance, they do not organise their buildings insurance as this is the responsibility of landlords. The evidence shows that only 25% of tenants had contents insurance that covered flood damage. The report identifies reasons why tenants did not have suitable contents insurance that covered against the risk of flooding, such as the cost of the insurance, the time it takes to renew the insurance policy, and not being able to find a quote that included flood cover.

Report recommendations

The report makes 12 recommendations for actions that can be taken by the insurance industry, Flood Re, landlords, local authorities, the Government and others to help enable homes and businesses to access sufficient insurance cover for flooding, while also informing any future policy decisions in this area:

Four recommendations focus on the role of insurers, insurance brokers and their representative bodies in helping customers find the most suitable flood insurance to cover individual needs.

Two recommendations focus on the need for landlords to make sure tenants are adequately supported in the case of a flood event.

Two recommendations relate to the need for further evidence gathering at a national scale, through a repeat of a national 2018 survey on the affordability and availability of insurance.

One recommendation calls for Flood Re to reduce the cost of its contents insurance premium for council tax band A and B properties.

Other recommendations focus on the need for increased awareness of flood risk for communities, highlighting the role of local authorities, the Environment Agency and representative bodies.

The report will be published today on gov.uk.

This review is essential in identifying some of the barriers that are in place for residents in high flood risk areas and understanding how we can take positive action to improve the protection available to residents moving forward.

The Government will be working with the insurance industry, Flood Re and the Environment Agency to explore the recommendations within the report and will respond formally to the recommendations in due course.

[HCWS554]

Environment Bill (Eighth sitting)

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Whitehead]

This is potentially an important amendment. What we would expect to happen in a Bill is that as the legislation moves through its narrative, one part of the narrative connects to the next one in a coherent way. One of our criticisms of this Bill, although we have said that it is a good Bill in its own right in what it seeks to achieve, is that it fails to add to its coherence as the narrative of the Bill proceeds. What I mean by that is that the Bill tends to set itself out in a number of chunks, a little like an early picaresque novel, rather than a more recent novel that includes the present, the past and the future. I am not suggesting that the Bill itself is a novel, but others may have views on that.

The amendment seeks to bridge the narrative gap in the Bill by ensuring that the measures in this clause relate back to the targets at the beginning of the Bill, which we discussed, as hon. Members with long memories will recall, when our proceedings started earlier this year. Those targets, which we agreed—indeed, we agreed not only the targets, but the mechanism by which they would be decided on—are very important in relation to the environmental improvement plan that will arise from the Bill. If we have an environmental improvement plan that does not relate to those targets and, indeed, has a narrative on environmental improvement that is actually a descriptive arrangement rather than an action arrangement, it is vital that the connection is properly made in the Bill itself and that the environmental improvement plan, essentially, is instructed to organise itself along lines that do relate to those targets in the first place.

As we discover when we go through this clause, an environmental improvement plan is, in effect, already in existence—or rather, this Bill will bring that environmental improvement plan into existence. The Bill describes the process by which an environmental improvement plan can be developed and put in place, and then the Bill says, “Oh and by the way, it so happens that there is an environmental improvement plan already in existence that we can adopt for the purpose of the Bill”—and that is “A Green Future: Our 25 Year Plan to Improve the Environment”. People will see that, in the legislation, it is specifically referred to as being the present environmental improvement plan, the one in front of us.

However, that improvement plan—as, again, I am sure hon. Members will know—was actually adopted in 2018. To show people how far back that goes, I point out that it has a “Foreword from the Prime Minister”, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), and a “Foreword from the Secretary of State”, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). Neither of them is in the same role at the moment, so it is quite an old document. Among other things, it does not address itself to the structure of the Environment Bill; it says a lot of very interesting things, but it certainly does not address itself to how those things should take place. I want to talk later in the debate about some of the issues in the environment plan, “A Green Future: Our 25 Year Plan to Improve the Environment”.

For the time being, suffice it to say that there appears to be a problem of connection, as far as the Bill is concerned. The amendment seeks to rectify that by clearly stating on the face of the Bill:

“The environmental improvement plan must include... measures which, taken together, are likely to achieve any targets set under sections 1 or 2 and will ensure that the next interim targets included in the plan are met”.

It therefore makes a direct connection between this part of the Bill and the first part. It states that the environmental improvement plan must include

“measures that each relevant central government department must carry out… measures to protect sensitive and vulnerable population groups… a timetable for adoption, implementation and review of the chosen measures… analysis of the options considered and their estimated impact on delivering progress… and measures to minimise, or where possible eliminate, the harmful impacts of pollution on human health and the environment”.

The amendment therefore comprehensively makes those connections.

I am sure the Minister will say that none of that is necessary, because everything is okay—it all works all right. However, I hope, at the very least, that, in explaining why that is the case, she will also explain why it is not necessary to make that link between this part of the Bill, the environmental improvement plan and the targets that we set out and agreed in previous sittings.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his opening words. It is an absolute privilege to be back with the Committee. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] It is more than seven months since we had to adjourn, very unusually, and we all know why that occurred. Sadly, we are still in a tricky situation with the coronavirus pandemic, but I am pleased that we are able to carry on with this hugely important piece of legislation, which will change the way we think about our environment forever. We are all involved in a very significant piece of work, and it is a delight to have you in the chair, Mr Gray.

Despite the fact that we are in these very tricky times with the pandemic, we need to look ahead as a Government and as a country. As we build back, as the Prime Minister has said, we want to base the recovery on solid foundations, including a fairer, greener and more resilient global economy. I want to touch on a few of these issues before we carry on, because it has been such a long time since we reconvened.

On the points made by the shadow Minister, we took expert evidence before. Everyone is entitled to take their own evidence as we go along to inform anything that we do. Written evidence is also submitted to back up the Bill, and that is always welcomed. The hon. Gentleman mentioned planning issues, and I absolutely assure him that we will address those when we get to the right part of the Bill and particularly the nature chapter. I think the Chair covered the issue of a statement comprehensively, and I fully support your words, Chair.

[The Chair]

Order. I think “Mr Gray” is the right thing; otherwise, we will get mixed up between Chair and Chairman. Also, in passing, I know you are all pleased to serve under my chairmanship, but you do not need to say so—[Laughter.]

[Rebecca Pow]

But we love saying that, Mr Gray. Okay, I will try not to say it again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

Thank you Chair, I get your point and I beg your forgiveness. I will not include everything, but I wanted to update the Committee because so much has happened since we stopped our consideration of the Bill. People think we have gone on hold, but absolutely we have not.

We will be doing much more work, and we will discuss our statutory EIPs, which will drive up environmental improvement, in the next few days alone, as well as how we will continue to protect the environment from damage by embedding environmental principles at the heart of Government policy.

Turning to the amendments, which is what you really want me to do, Mr Gray, I appreciate the desire of the hon. Member for Southampton, Test to strengthen the EIPs—that is what clause 7 is all about. I am delighted that he has raised the 25-year environment plan because I was at the launch of that plan. Although colleagues who filled those important posts are in different roles now, I was there as Parliamentary Private Secretary in this Department.

I am utterly delighted to introduce this—perhaps the shadow Minister failed to address this—as the 25-year environment plan is actually the first EIP. That is what this is all about. What we are doing with the EIPs is triggering what is set out in the excellent plan. The Bill’s statutory cycle of monitoring, reporting and planning is designed to ensure that the Government take early, regular steps to achieve long-term targets and are held to account through regular scrutiny by the Office for Environmental Protection and by Parliament.

The Bill creates a statutory triple lock, which we will hear about a great deal as the Bill progresses, to drive short-term progress. First, the Government must have an environmental improvement plan setting out the steps they intend to take to improve the environment and to review it every five years. When reviewing it, they must consider whether further or different measures should be adopted to achieve interim—five yearly—targets and long-term targets. When we review the EIP in 2023 we will update it as necessary to include the steps that we intend to take to achieve the targets that we set. That will be five years after the launch of the first plan in 2018.

Secondly, the Government must report on progress towards achieving targets every year. Thirdly, the Office for Environmental Protection will hold us to account on progress towards achieving targets. Each year it will comment on the progress towards targets reported in the Government’s EIP annual report and can flag early on whether it believes there is a risk of the Government not meeting their long-term targets. It may make recommendations on how progress could be improved, and the Government have to respond. Ultimately, the OEP has the power to bring legal proceedings if the Government breach their environmental law duties, including the duty to achieve long-term targets.

In requiring that EIPs set measures to deal with pollution, amendment 88 would single out aspects of the environment ahead of others. EIPs are defined as plans significantly to increase the natural environment. Measures on air quality, with corresponding benefits to human health, are already within the scope of EIP, so it is not necessary to place duties on particular matters in the EIP, which could undermine consideration of other important environmental goals.

The Bill includes a duty to set a legally binding target for PM_2.5, the air pollutant with the greatest impact on human health, in addition to a further long-term air quality target. The introduction of measures to meet the air quality target will reduce exposure to harmful pollutants and deliver significant improvements to human health. Other targets that meet the criteria set out in clause 6(8) already have their own statutory regimes, including any appropriate requirements to set out plans and measures to achieve them. It is therefore unnecessary to require that EIPs include measures to achieve them.

Amendment 112 would explicitly link the measures in the EIP to “meeting the environmental objectives”, and I address this with the assumption that the environmental objectives are to achieve and maintain a healthy and natural environment, as set out in new clause 1. The Bill’s provisions already ensure the delivery of the significant environmental improvements that the hon. Member for Southampton, Test seeks through the amendment and ensure that the Government can be held to account. Targets and EIPs have the objective under clauses 6 and 7 of delivering significant improvements to the natural environment, so I urge the hon. Gentleman not to press the amendment.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

As you suggest, Mr Gray, I will not go through all the formalities. It is a pleasure to be on this Committee, although it is a little like the philosopher’s axe: which part of this Committee is still part of the preceding Committee? Many of us are new to this, and it has been a long-running process.

The Minister is notorious for her optimism—[Interruption]—or has a reputation for optimism. When she talks about the 25-year improvement plan, I wonder whether that is 25 years forward or whether it is taking us 25 years back, because it is about filling the gaps left by our leaving the European Union and the protections that came from that membership. I fear, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test explained earlier, that the heart has been ripped out of the Bill.

To turn to the amendment, as you directed Mr Gray, I listened closely to the Minister’s observations and I do not quite understand why she is not sympathetic to some of the amendment’s proposals. I particularly query her attitude to the natural environment. She will have seen the representations from the National Trust about including heritage within the ambit of natural environment, and that prompts a big question. There is no natural environment; we have been part of the environment as human beings for many, many years and we have had huge impact on it. I suspect we will pursue this matter in further discussions, but I would welcome her observations on why heritage is not included among the proposed protections.

In particular, I do not understand why the Minister does not favour the inclusion in the environmental improvement plans of proposed paragraph (b) in amendment 88, which calls for the reporting of

“measures that each relevant central government department must carry out”.

All of us involved in rural policy know that it is an endless issue, and that virtually every part of government touches on the environment of rural areas. Those policies must be included as an essential safeguard to ensure that the environmental improvement plans work properly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

The hon. Gentleman has hit the nail on the head: the natural environment is very complicated and complex. We have set out the Bill as it appears so that it takes an holistic approach to the environment, as I believe he will see as we proceed in our deliberations.

I believe that the hon. Gentleman was referring to rurality in particular, but the Bill covers everything about the environment, and not just one thing or another. It takes an holistic approach, and is a great deal more holistic than anything that the European Union has done. The environmental improvement plans are significant because there are no equivalents to them under EU law: member states were not required to maintain a comprehensive long-term plan to improve the environment significantly, but that is a key issue of the Bill. Nor was there any requirement on member states to report annually on progress towards any kind of significant improvement. EU law tends to require member states to prepare or publish plans to achieve particular targets, for example on air quality or water quality, but it does not offer the holistic approach of the Bill. By leaving the EU, we have an enormous opportunity to look at the environment in the round. I hope that helps Members.

[Dr Whitehead]

I am sorry, but I am just not convinced. I will consider clause 7 in further detail later, but the gap that we have identified in terms of the connection between this part of the Bill and the first six clauses is egregious, and does not appear to relate at all to what is in the 25-year environment plan, interesting though that plan may be in its own right.

The amendment is important because it addresses those shortcomings and it should not be set aside on the grounds that everything will be all right, and that the Bill is quite an holistic Bill after all. For that reason, I am afraid that we will seek to divide the Committee.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

I am putting that to the Committee for its comfort and security. However, there is a continuing real issue in the Bill with the way in which it has been drafted with those “mays” and “musts”. While we have done part of our job by drawing attention to that and putting those amendments down, even though we are not going to pursue them in detail, it is within the powers of other members of the Committee—as happened this morning—to draw attention to the effect that a “may” instead of a “must” has on a passage as we go through the Bill. I fear that that will be, even without my intervention, a recurring leitmotif as we go through the Bill, and that hon. Members will be particularly concerned about that formation as it relates to a thing they are concerned with as the Bill goes through. They may raise that concern independent of our portmanteau amendments on “mays” and “musts”.

I hope the Minister will reflect on that. I observe that she has been assiduous in tabling amendments. It is unfortunate, that those amendments do not include any recognition that this is a particular problem with the Bill. There are amendments that could be put forward that would rectify that.

I hope the Minister will take from this exchange that there is a real concern about how that particular formulation works through the Bill, and especially in this instance. I hope she will consider, at least in some of the instances where those “mays” and “musts” collide, tabling some amendments later in the Bill’s passage to rectify or ameliorate those parts of the Bill. That piece of sunny optimism on my part perhaps goes with the Minister’s sunny optimism on many things. Let us see whose optimism gets the upper hand in this instance.

Finally, it might have been a little mischievous of us to seek to draw the hon. Member for Gloucester into supporting a vote on this clause. Out of sensitivity to his general circumstances in life, we will not seek to do that, because I think the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his amendment. I think it illustrates, however, that this concern is held not only on this side, but across the Committee, so there is an additional onus on the Minister to think about whether there are instances where those “mays” and “musts” can cease colliding and can be amended for the better purposes of the Bill as a whole.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester for his excellent speech. He knows that I hold him in great respect and I always listen to what he says. He collars me many a time. I have given this a huge amount of thought and talked to a great many people about it, because it has been preying on my mind—he can be absolutely sure of that. He has explained a bit about my background, so he will know that I am not making that up.

My hon. Friend painted a lovely picture of life in the countryside, especially in his lovely constituency, including in the Robinswood Hill park, which I know because I briefly worked on rural and countryside issues in Gloucester many years ago. That was one of the places people revered even then.

I am dealing with the “may” as it relates to this amendment, which I think is the right thing to do.

[The Chair]

It is.

[Rebecca Pow]

It is cheeky of the shadow Minister to try to widen out the “mays” and “musts” at this juncture.

Connecting people with the environment is really important to our health and wellbeing. It is a core objective of the Government’s 25-year plan, which we can all have a look at later to remind ourselves. It is written in there, I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester, that connecting more people from all backgrounds with the natural environment for their health and wellbeing is a key part of the 25-year environment plan, which is our first environmental improvement plan. When reviewing the environmental improvement plan, the Government must consider whether further measures are needed to achieve the targets. Under the Bill, long-term targets can be set out for any aspects of the natural environment or people’s enjoyment of it. As he will know, the Bill requires the Government to set out at least one target in four priority areas—air quality, biodiversity, water waste and resource efficiency—as well as the fine particulate matter target. Other targets can be set later, as we go along. There is huge scope for that.

We are already implementing many projects and schemes to connect people with nature. My hon. Friend has named a number of them already. For example, there is the children in nature programme, on which I, as the Environment Minister, link up with the Department for Education. There is the green social prescribing shared outcomes fund; he touched on the funding that has just been given. I was at the launch of the National Academy for Social Prescribing last year, when I was briefly a Minister in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. I went with that hat on, although I had done a lot of work as a Back Bencher on green social prescribing; my hon. Friend is absolutely right about how important it is and what a difference it makes to people’s lives.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester touched on pocket parks. That fund was launched last year by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, to the tune of £1.35 million, and community groups can still bid for that now. If my hon. Friend or other hon. Members know any groups that would like to bid for that money, please encourage them to do so, as that would be worthwhile. We have also launched a £40 million green recovery challenge fund, supporting projects across the country to connect people with nature and generate jobs at the same time. So, there are a lot of ongoing projects, which will not stop. We expect public authorities to consider how to help to tackle the issue of health and wellbeing, through actions to comply with the strengthened biodiversity duty introduced later in the Bill, in clause 93.

I know my hon. Friend knows that the environmental improvement plan can set out the steps that the Government intend to take to improve people’s enjoyment of the natural environment. I have touched on that already, but that is engrained in the Bill. As my hon. Friend said, people’s enjoyment of the natural environment can, in some instances, have a negative impact on the natural environment. For example, if too many visitors go to a beach, it can negatively impact the wildlife and habitats, including through litter left behind. I am really conscious of that, because we have had some significant incidences of it over the summer. I had to engage with local authorities about it, including those in Cornwall, where it was raised as being a terribly difficult issue to deal with.

Our enjoyment of nature cannot take precedence over our stewardship of that environment for the future. That is why we do not necessarily want to give equal prominence to environmental improvement and people’s enjoyment in EIPs, as would result from these amendments. I understand that Greener UK agrees that the focus should be on improving the whole, holistic natural environment, not diverting it from its primary status. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester touched on that.

I highlight the link between the Environment Bill and the new environmental land management scheme, which is being brought through under the Agriculture Bill. ELMS will be one of the tools for delivery in the 25-year environment plan and one of the measures in the Environment Bill. It will pay for delivery of public goods. Listed among those public goods are beauty and heritage, as touched on earlier by the hon. Member for Cambridge, as well as engagement with the environment. That is actually listed as something that can be delivered as a public good through the Ag Bill and the new ELM system. There is a direct link with what my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester touched on, and I hope that gives him some assurance.

--- Later in debate ---

If the Minister does not accept the amendment, she ought at the very least to give an indication that that is the procedure that she will adopt, among other things, for the future preparation of an environmental improvement plan for the period post 2023. We will have lost some time as a result, but if she indicates that that would be very much on her mind for any future environmental improvement plan, it would go a long way to comforting us, although ideally the measure should be in the Bill in order to properly inform this section for the future.

[Rebecca Pow]

I want to assure the shadow Minister that the Government were elected on a manifesto that promised to protect and restore our natural environment after leaving the EU, and that is why the environment improvement plans and targets share an objective of significantly improving the natural environment.

I will whizz through my response as briefly as I can. The hon. Member touched on the fact that the natural world does not exist in a vacuum. We are in complete agreement. It is a very complicated scene. We interact with it; we use it and rely on it; and we change it, as the hon. Member referred to in many examples. It becomes part of our life, our history, our values and it is a natural heritage and inheritance that we should all be proud of. That is why the 25-year environment plan has at its heart that we will improve the natural environment and recognises that we cannot manage it in isolation.

The plan committed us to

“Safeguarding and enhancing the beauty of our natural scenery and improving its environmental value while being sensitive to considerations of its heritage.”

That is what the plan mentions, so I want to give absolute assurances. I believe the shadow Minister is not aware that this point is all part and parcel of the Environment Bill already.

I understand that those outside this House who have been calling for the amendment feel that greater confidence would be given by an explicit reference in the Bill to these particular heritage features of land. I know that lots of people have been concerned about this, so I want to reassure them that the Bill ensures that our 25-year environment plan, including its stated recognition of the connection between the natural environment and heritage, will be adopted as the first environmental improvement plan. It will set the benchmark for future plans, including how to balance environmental and heritage considerations.

The approach we took in our 25-year environment plan on heritage was welcomed by stakeholders and is expected to be mirrored in future environmental plans by the future Government. I hope that give assurances. The shadow Minister raises some serious points about heritage, but I think we are actually in agreement, so I would ask him to withdraw the amendment.

[Dr Whitehead]

I am not sure that the Minister can point to the exact part of the Bill where those things take place in the way that she has suggested they do, although I am a little reassured by the fact that she clearly has a good understanding of the problem that we have set out today and is alive to the issue. I hope the Minister will follow up this debate with some equally assiduous work as previously, to ensure that it is a substantial feature of the next, or revised, environmental improvement plan. I hope it will give great reassurance not just to people in this House, but to those concerned with our natural heritage and the way that our heritage as a whole impacts on the natural environment and the changes that have been made within it over time. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 8

Annual reports on environmental improvement plans

[Dr Whitehead]

I beg to move amendment 89, in clause 8, page 5, line 32, at end insert—

“and,

(c) consider biodiversity reports published by authorities under section 40A of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 (as amended by section 94 of this Act).”

Clause 8 is concerned with the preparation of annual reports on the implementation of the current environmental improvement plan. The amendment would additionally require the consideration of annual reports on the plan’s implementation and operation. The clause sets out a number of ways in which that should be done. By the way, I cannot resist stating that, as hon. Members will observe, subsection (1) says:

“The Secretary of State must prepare annual reports”.

The Secretary of State has no option but to do this. It is not a question of the Secretary of State “may”; rather, he “must prepare annual reports”. There is obviously some careful writing going on here.

Subsection (1) says:

“An annual report must...describe what has been done, in the period to which the report relates”

and

“consider...whether the natural environment has, or particular aspects of it have, improved during that period.”

Later in the Bill, clause 94 amends the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 to require the Secretary of State to look at biodiversity reports, which

“must contain...a summary of the action which the authority has taken over the period covered by the report...a summary of the authority’s plans for complying with those duties... any quantitative data required to be included in the report”,

and

“any other information that the authority considers it appropriate to include in the report.”

I will not read out the entire clause—as you will be delighted to hear, Mr Gray—but it sets out a number of other things that the biodiversity report should include. Nevertheless, in terms of biodiversity reports, that appears to be fairly central to the idea of reporting, on an annual basis, what has happened to that environmental improvement plan. That is, those biodiversity reports, which are coming out on a regular basis, should inevitably be included in the annual changes that have happened, which are required to be reported on by the Secretary of State as far as the improvement plan is concerned.

However, as hon. Members can observe, there is no linkage in clause 8 with clause 94 as far as biodiversity plans are concerned. We are concerned that, without something on the face of the Bill to link those biodiversity reports and the progress of the environmental improvement plan, those reports will be set aside, not taken into account and not included in the Secretary of State’s progress reports, and will have much less effect as a result. The amendment would therefore require the Secretary of State to

“consider biodiversity reports published by authorities under section 40A of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 (as amended by section 94 of this Act).”

That is the important part. We are considering an amendment to the 2006 Act later in the Bill specifically to do with biodiversity reports, yet we leave them hanging elsewhere in the legislation. The amendment introduce create an important linking passage between those two issues. The Committee ought to think carefully about whether it wishes that link to be explicit on the face of the Bill, or whether the inclusion of those biodiversity reports in the Secretary of State’s update on the environmental improvement plan should be left to chance.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for his consideration of the Bill and the amendment. However, I assure him that the amendment is not needed. Clause 8 places a duty on the Secretary of State to produce annual reports on progress in implementing the environmental improvement plan. As the current 25-year environment plan shows, EIPs have a very broad scope. We have already touched on that. The reporting requirements that the Government have proposed are equally broad in scope, describing what action has been taken to implement the plan, and considering whether aspects of the natural environment are improving. This consideration should draw upon relevant existing data. Specifying that particular reports must be considered is not necessary.

The Bill will introduce a requirement to produce biodiversity reports as part of a strengthened biodiversity duty on public authorities. These reports will provide valuable data, but are already in the scope of the existing reporting duty of the annual EIP reports. To ensure that the annual EIP reports are as robust and comprehensive as possible, we want them to be based on the best evidence. We also want to retain the flexibility to consider the most relevant evidence for a particular context.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

I beg to move amendment 90, in clause 8, page 5, line 32, at end insert

“and,

(c) include an analysis of whether the policies and measures set out in the environmental improvement plan will ensure that any targets set under sections 1 and 2 and any interim targets set under sections 10 and 13 are likely to be met.”

This amendment is another example of the theme that we have been developing, first on the extent to which the later parts of the Bill link properly to the earlier parts, and secondly on whether provisions should be included in the Bill to ensure that those links are made when the Bill becomes law and are not just in the minds of the Minister and well-disposed civil servants.

The amendment, which also relates to clause 7(5), proposes that the environmental improvement plan should include

“an analysis of whether the policies and measures set out in the environmental improvement plan will ensure that any targets set under sections 1 and 2”,

which we have agreed to,

“and any interim targets set under sections 10 and 13”,

which we will talk about later,

“are likely to be met.”

It is important to the proper functioning of any environmental improvement plan that it is drawn up on the basis of the targets. The Minister has mentioned that this is not just a question of the targets that are in the Bill; other targets can be set on the basis of the framework in clause 1. It seems to me that if that is one of our prime mechanisms for ensuring that what happens under the Bill as a whole works, it has to be a prime function of an environmental improvement plan. The idea of setting up an environmental improvement plan to miss, subvert or undermine those targets would be anathema to us, but there is nothing in the Bill to prevent that from happening. The two clauses are just not linked together. We therefore think, as I have mentioned before, that the amendment is important to rectify architectural defects in the Bill.

Under the amendment, the analysis would be one of the things the Secretary of State was required to include when preparing an environmental improvement plan. Of course, when the environmental improvement plan that we have at present was produced, no targets were in place, no targets had been set and no targets had been considered. This is therefore an entirely new thing that would have to go into the revision of the environmental improvement plan that the Secretary of State is required to do in 2023.

I hope that the Minister will be fairly generous in considering whether to put this provision in the Bill. I think that it is an important change that needs to be made and, given that we have thought about it for a while, we will consider dividing the Committee if there is not a reasonable response to what is a serious and considerable lack of joining up between this clause and the earlier clauses.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank shadow Minister for his proposal that the Government annually assess the sufficiency of environmental improvement plan measures for achieving our targets. He is clearly aware, as are we and, indeed, all the people who have put so much work into the structure of the targets and the EIPs, that it is very important to keep the EIPs on track. With that in mind, I assure him that the whole system that has been set up—the Bill’s statutory cycle of monitoring, planning and reporting—is designed to ensure that the Government regularly assess the sufficiency of their actions, while allowing some flexibility in how they do so.

The EIP annual reports are intended to be a retrospective assessment of what has happened in the preceding 12 months. The five-yearly EIP review is a more comprehensive assessment in which the Government must look not only backwards but forwards and consider whether the EIP should include additional measures. If so, the EIP may be updated and a new version laid before Parliament.

The Office for Environmental Protection will comment yearly on the progress reported in each EIP annual report, providing it with the opportunity to flag early on where it believes there is a risk that the Government might not meet their legally binding, long-term targets. It may also make recommendations on how progress towards meeting targets can be improved, to which the Government must respond.

Environment Bill (Ninth sitting)

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 9th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Whitehead]

I think J. L. Austin is very interesting, but others disagree. Indeed, the dictionary definition of “proportionately”, which underlines his point, is:

“In a way that corresponds in size or amount to something else.”

It has no consequence in its own right, and that is the problem that we have with this particular formulation. If there are no trousers on “proportionately”, it can mean whatever anybody wants it to mean. In this instance, it appears to mean what Ministers of the Crown may want it to mean. It is possible—not in terms of the intentions or anything else of present company—that the definition of “proportionately” is entirely what Ministers of the Crown may want to make of it. A much more straightforward example of that particular action is Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty deciding that words mean exactly what he wanted them to mean.

We may come on to this later, but the Bill should define what “proportionately” might mean, what its limits are and what Ministers may do when deciding, proportionately, what environmental principles should be. I accept that it may well be the case that Ministers have a view on environmental principles and how that policy statement may be put into place. This is not an appropriate way to bring Ministers into that particular discussion. For the sake of clarity, we would like the to see the word removed from the clause, so that it reads, “a policy statement is a statement explaining how the environmental principles should be interpreted.” That offers enough leeway as far as policy statements are concerned. I welcome the Minister’s explanation as to why that additional line should be necessary in the clause, and what it adds rather than what it takes away, in terms of making quite meaningless some of the things that I have outlined in the first part of the clause with regard to Ministers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for these amendments, and welcome the opportunity to clarify why the provisions are needed. The amendments would remove the need for the policy statement to set out how the environmental principles should be proportionately applied by Ministers when making policy. They also remove important proportionality considerations associated with the legal duty to have due regard to the policy statement on environmental principles. Proportionate application is a key aspect of use of the principles, and it ensures that Government policy is reasoned and based on sensible decision making. It is vital that this policy statement provides current and future Ministers with clarity on how the principles should be applied proportionately, so that they are used in a balanced and sensible way. Setting out how these principles need to be applied in a proportionate manner does not weaken their effect, nor does ensuring that action on the basis of the policy statement is only taken where there is an environmental benefit. It simply means that in the policy statement, we will be clear that Ministers need to think through environmental, social and economic considerations in the round, and ensure that the environment is properly factored into policy made across Government from the very start of the process.

When the policy statement is then used, Ministers of the Crown will take action when it is sensible to do so. This approach is consistent with the objective in relation to the policy statement of embedding sustainable development, aimed at ensuring environmental, social, and economic factors are all considered when making policy. Not balancing those factors could have consequences that halt progress. For example, a disproportionate application of the “polluter pays” principle could result in anyone being asked to pay for any negligible harm on the environment, when in reality, many actions taken by humans cause some environmental harm, such as going for a walk in the country. It is essential to ensure that the principles are applied in an appropriate and balanced way, and proportionality is absolutely key to this. Since this amendment removes vital proportionality considerations, I ask the hon. Member not to press amendments 91 and 92.

[The Chair]

Before I call Daniel Zeichner, who caught my eye, can I explain a small point about procedure? It would be helpful if anybody who wishes to speak while the person who has moved the amendment is speaking would catch my eye one way or another—standing up in their place is the clearest way to do so. Those people speak, and the Minister speaks afterwards. That means the Minister is replying to the points that are made. For now, it is fine, but in future, Members should catch my eye while the mover of the amendment is speaking. They can speak, and the Minister can reply to what hon. Members have to say.

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[Dr Whitehead]

I stand corrected. So we are discussing amendments 93 and 114 in this group and discussing amendment 94 in the next group. I will remove my remarks on amendment 94 and save them for the next group. I have to say that I do not think there is much between the formulation put forward by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith and the one put forward by us, as we will come to in the next amendment. Therefore, we support the hon. Lady in her endeavours to try and get some clarity as far as this section is concerned.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank hon. Members for the amendments. Clearly, we have sparked some quite strong feelings here about this particular issue. I want to make it clear, Chair, that I am just going to focus on defence, to which the amendment relates.

While we recognise the intention behind these amendments, it is fundamental to the protection of our country that the exemptions for armed forces, defence and national security are maintained. The exemptions that would be removed by the amendments relate to highly sensitive matters that are vital for the protection of our realm, so it is appropriate for them to be omitted from the duty to have due regard to the environmental policy statement. A critical part of the role of Defence and Home Office Ministers is to make decisions about the use of UK forces to prevent harm, save lives, protect UK interests or deal with a threat. We have several colleagues in the Room who have strong armed forces links, and I think they will agree with that summary. It would not be appropriate for Ministers to have to go through the process of considering the set of environmental principles before implementing any vital and urgent policies related to the issues I have just mentioned.

Furthermore, the Ministry of Defence has its own environmental policies in place, as well as a commitment that its policies protect the environment, with a strong record on delivering on those commitments, which we had reference to from both sides, particularly from the hon. Members for Southampton, Test and for Cambridge. For example, the MOD require that all new infrastructure programmes, projects and activities have to include sustainability and environmental appraisals. Those appraisals cover a similar spectrum of analysis to the environmental principles.

I also want to highlight that the MOD takes the environment extremely seriously. It is adapting to mitigate defence’s impact on climate, which was touched on by the hon. Member for Putney, to build resilience and support the Government’s commitment to net-zero emissions and a review is underway to develop its response to net zero and climate change, with a new strategy planned to add to the existing sustainable development policy. That is a clear indication that the MOD means business where the environment is concerned.

As was touched on by a couple of Members, and particularly the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith, the Ministry of Defence owns or otherwise controls approximately 1% of the UK’s landmass—

[Dr Whitehead]

Two per cent.

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[Rebecca Pow]

My facts say 1%, but shall we agree, Chair, that it is nearly 2%?

[The Chair]

It is quite a lot.

[Rebecca Pow]

It is a significant amount. Actually, I think the shadow Minister is right and it is nearer 2%. More than a third—38%—of that area is designated as sites of special scientific interest. SSSIs have a statutory duty that they will be managed and protected and that duty is not removed—it is not exempted. As such, that work carries on. The MOD’s record on getting those sites into favourable condition is good, with 48% of the sites in that condition. The MOD works very hard with Natural England on those plans and projects; it has a dedicated environmental team, working on the environment through the MOD.

When I was a news reporter, I had a wonderful day with the MOD up on Salisbury Plain, looking at its tremendous stone curlew project. Even though the tanks rattle across, the stone curlews can still thrive. The Whip is looking at his phone, but I am sure that he lives near there; I would like someone to report back to me on how the stone curlews are doing now, because that is a fantastic project.

To go back to my point, because of the particular sensitivities of this policy area as well as existing environmental commitments, I hope that I am giving some clarity as to why the MOD is exempted. It might be helpful for the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith to note that there are exemptions in the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Bill, and they are in categories that are quite similar to those in this Bill, if not a little bit wider. They are listed in clause 10(3) of that Bill as

“(a) national defence or civil emergency,

(b) finance or budgets.”

I thought that it might be interesting to put that on the record.

I hope that I have provided some clarity on this issue. I think we are covering a lot of the same ground here, so I ask the hon. Member to withdraw her amendment.

[Deidre Brock]

The Minister talks about the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Bill, but unfortunately defence is still reserved to Westminster, so I am afraid that the Scottish Government would not have any control over that issue anyway.

The issue for me here is transparency for our citizens, so that they know exactly what impact the armed forces are having on our environment. The Minister talks about the highly sensitive nature of the armed forces’ activities, but not all their activities are sensitive. For example, what are their recycling rates and what are their targets towards the reduction of emissions? Regarding the environmental impact of the armed forces, just today we heard on the radio from the actor Joanna Lumley about the impact of underwater explosions on marine mammals, and the hearing loss that results when munitions that have been on the seabed for many years are detonated. Such issues will become more and more important. I have pursued the question of munitions dumps for a while, as I mentioned; it is not going away. There is an increasing clamour about it from around the world, and it is important for the Minister to remember that because it will return as an issue in the near future.

It is simply no longer acceptable for the armed forces to be exempt from reporting their progress towards climate change targets, or their compliance with environmental targets or any of the other targets that other parts of Government are required to report on. I am disappointed that the Government cannot support this amendment. As I have said, the number of exemptions for the armed forces in primary legislation across Government is extraordinary; in fact, there are so many that the Commons Library felt that it could not list them in their entirety in its briefing.

It is important to hold to the principle that we all have a part to play in trying to save the planet. There should be no exemptions for any Government Department. I accept that there are sensitivities around national security, but I think there are ways of addressing them and taking them into account. I am delighted that Labour Members are with me on this issue, and I will press the matter to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

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[Deidre Brock]

The amendment would bring tax and spend into the scope of the Bill. I am glad that Labour is also addressing this because when I mentioned this on Second Reading, few Members seemed to have grasped it. It is a really important point. If we are not considering the big issues of politics and the spending on them, we are not putting the environment high on the list of priorities. Likewise, if environmental considerations do not play a part in taxation decisions, we are missing a great chance to influence people’s behaviour and help save our planet.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank hon. Members for tabling the amendment. While we recognise the intention behind it, it is important to maintain the exemption to ensure sound economic and fiscal decision making. It is important to be clear that this exemption only refers to central spending decisions, because at fiscal events and spending reviews such decisions must be taken with consideration to a wide range of public priorities. These include public spending on individual areas such as health, defence, education and the environment, as well as sustainable economic growth and development, financial stability and sustainable levels of debt.

There is no exemption for individual policy interventions simply because they require spending. Ministers should still have due regard to the policy statement when developing and implementing all policies to which the statement is applicable. This means that while the policy statement will not need to be used when the Treasury is allocating budgets to Departments, it will be used when Departments develop policies that draw upon that budget. This is the best place for the use of the policy statement to effectively deliver environmental protection.

With regard to the exemption for taxation, let me reassure hon. Members that the Government are committed to encouraging positive environmental outcomes through the tax system, as demonstrated already by our commitment to introducing a new tax on plastic packaging, to encourage greater use of recycled plastic. We also have examples such as the woodland carbon guarantee and commitments to biodiversity net gain, with the Treasury commissioning the Dasgupta report. A raft of measures demonstrate this. However, we need to ensure the Treasury Minister’s ability to alter the UK’s fiscal position is not undermined, since taxation raises the revenue that allows us to deliver essential public services, such as the NHS, police and schools.

Although I recognise the purpose of the amendment, it is beneficial for the country that the Treasury can make economic and financial decisions with regard to a wide range of considerations, which will, of course, include the environment and climate. I therefore ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw this amendment.

[Dr Whitehead]

As I always am, I will be polite. The Minister, with great aplomb, read out words from a piece of paper that was placed in front of her to explain what the clause means, but she must realise, as we all do, that that is total nonsense. It makes no sense at all.

Let us look at actions in various other areas of Government. The imperatives on net zero and climate change that we just passed through the House effectively apply to decision making in all Departments. Departments are not supposed to make decisions about their activities and spending without reference to those imperatives. Yet what we have on this piece of paper—I am sure it was assiduously drafted by someone seeking to defend this particular exemption—appears to drive a coach and horses through that consideration, let alone other considerations. Apparently, in taking its decisions on larger matters, the Treasury does not have to be bound by considerations on environmental protection.

I think that is a shock to all of us, because it means that the Bill is completely useless. The Treasury considers a large number of things in its policies, covering every area of practical Government activity, one way or another. If the situation is as the Minister has described, where do environmental protections stand? With any environmental protection, if it is part of the consideration of Treasury policy development, there is a door for the Treasury to run out of. As I understand it, that is what it says on the piece of paper.

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[Dr Whitehead]

The Treasury would have had that leeway, because of the phrase “have due regard”. There are clearly circumstances in which emergencies or other issues mean that Ministers may at particular stages have to draw away from their environmental or climate change imperatives and responsibilities. However, the important thing about having due regard is that if they do so, they have to explain why and under what circumstances they are taking the decision. Clause 18 will do exactly the opposite: Ministers will not have to explain anything—they can just not do anything that they do not feel like doing. I hope that Conservative Members will join us in saying that that is not good enough and is not what the Bill should be doing.

There could be another formulation. The hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth has pointed the way; with the right formulation, we could encompass the sort of circumstances she mentions. Of course we would be happy to support that, because there are indeed considerations that need to be undertaken at certain stages of emergency and difficulty, and which may cause some difficulty with the imperatives. That is what due regard protects us from, to a considerable extent. However, the principle that someone who does something other than what we think the imperative should point towards should justify what they are doing and be accountable for it is a very important part of our processes, and that is not the case here.

[Rebecca Pow]

I just want to clarify a few points. As I am sure the shadow Minister knows, HMT takes environmental impact extremely seriously already; in fact, it is referred to in the Green Book, which guides policy making, that it has to be taken into account including consideration of natural capital. The environmental principles will be referred to in the Green Book, so we already have very strong measures that HMT is obviously being guided by.

[Dr Whitehead]

Forgive me, but I think the Minister has elided “is” and “ought”. Yes, the Treasury may do those things and put them in the Green Book, but under clause 18 it does not have to, just as the Ministry of Defence is doing things that we might say are laudable—we heard about curlews coexisting alongside tanks—but it does not have to, and if for any reason it did not do them, it would not have to say anything about it. It is entirely lucky that the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence are doing what they are doing, but that need not be the case. The Minister illustrated in what she read out a little while ago that that is not the case. They do not have to do those things under the Bill. In defence of the fact that they do not have do them, she has highlighted examples of where, despite that and because of their good nature and good will, they are doing them anyway. I would expect that to happen, but it does not mean that in legislation we should allow good luck to rule the things that we think are imperative as far as environmental protection is concerned.

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[Dr Whitehead]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, but that is not quite right, really. The Secretary of State must report on developments and on international environmental protection legislation that appears to him or her to be significant, and after he or she has taken a judgment, he or she produces a report that must be laid before Parliament. What comes before Parliament is not what is before the Secretary of State. It is not a gazetteer of international environmental protection action. It is a report after the Secretary of State has decided what is significant and what is not significant. Those things that the Secretary of State defines as not significant are left out of the report.

Parliament could conceivably say, “Aha! We have done a great deal of separate assiduous research and we have decided that the Secretary of State has left this and this and this out—why has the Secretary of State left these things out?”, but that requires a separate series of actions from Parliament that are outwith the report, not about the report itself. The amendment seeks to define what the Secretary of State should reasonably put into a report for Parliament to look at. We have also tabled an amendment on what should be done in addition to the report being published, which we will come to in a moment.

The central point of the amendment is that the Secretary of State should

“consult on the criteria and thresholds to be applied in determining significance”

and then

“publish guidance on those matters”.

That still gives the Secretary of State some leeway in determining what is in the report, but it means that there is a body of guidance by which the Secretary of State should be guided in terms of what he or she puts in the report for the subsequent perusal of Parliament. At present, because there is no definition of “significant” in the Bill, that guidance is completely lacking.

I hope that now I have given that explanation, the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden can support the amendment, as I think what he seeks to ensure is that Parliament gets a report and the chance to discuss what the Secretary of State has done. I would suggest that a much better way of doing that is by agreeing to the amendment, rather than the word standing unexplained, as it does at the moment.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for the amendment. I recognise the intention behind requiring further guidance on what counts as “significant”. However, this is a horizon-scanning provision. As such, it would be counterproductive for the Government to try to anticipate in advance the kinds of significant developments that might be identified.

There is no single overarching metric for the environment. Many of us touched on the complex landscape that is the environment earlier today. Creating an objective test is impossible. It is important that there is flexibility to take account of the full range of developments in the period, in order to produce a report that is useful in informing domestic legislation. The amendment would reduce the flexibility, potentially limiting the scope and use of the report.

The review will cover other countries’ legislation that aims to protect, maintain, restore or enhance the natural environment or that involves the monitoring, assessing, considering or reporting of anything in relation to the above that is significant. What is significant will depend on the period being assessed. Something significant today might not be significant next year and different things might be significant next year.

On the proposals for an independent assessment and an oral statement, I assure the hon. Member that there are already effective measures in place to allow Parliament to scrutinise the report. That point was ably raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden. When the report is laid before Parliament, Members can highlight any areas where they believe the Government have missed important developments. It is obviously really important that they do this, and it will ensure independent scrutiny. It is crucial that this is carried out and that we look at what is going on internationally. If we want to call ourselves global leaders, we have to be aware of what is being done elsewhere. If there are good examples, we need to copy them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

There has been a glorious range of opinions, including those of one or two notorious climate change deniers, so there would have been a completely different view on things that were happening internationally, depending on which part of the spectrum of opinion was held by the office holder at the time. Clearly, there can be a change of Governments in the future when this legislation is in place. Surely having an objective set of criteria for how this is done is far better than just having a subjective view, with it depending on whether something is deemed to be significant by the office holder and Government at the time.

[Rebecca Pow]

I think the hon. Gentleman has stepped right into my trap, because that is why it is really important that the report goes before both Houses so that they can both comment. The whole purpose of it is that it will be well scrutinised, so that the right measures are introduced. There will be many measures, and we will not want all of them to be introduced, so we need to choose the very best ones. The whole idea of the Secretary of State’s report is that it will be open and transparent—I honestly hope that I have made that clear.

The clause is about ensuring that the Government take active steps to identify significant improvements and are accountable to Parliament for the actions that they will take in response. It is therefore right that the Government take full responsibility for producing the report. I do not think that requiring the Secretary of State to outsource the responsibility is the right approach. Additionally, independent consideration can already be provided by the Office for Environmental Protection—for example, clause 27 provides Ministers with the power to require the OEP to advise on any other matters relating to the natural environment, which could include developments in international environmental protection legislation that it sees as important, positive or progressive, so we have that extra layer there as well.

I hope that I have given some clarity, and I ask hon. Members not to press amendments 195 to 197.

[Dr Whitehead]

I think we have not got to amendment 197 yet.

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[Dr Whitehead]

The explanatory statement for this particular amendment relates to the question of securing better or further effecting full compliance with the Aarhus convention, which is a wide-ranging convention relating to environmental protection and activities.

The amendment suggests that the Secretary of State should keep under consideration how the UK Government might secure better or further effect full compliance with the Aarhus convention. We are signatories to it, so one would have thought that we should try to fully comply with it, in general terms. The amendment is really asking the Secretary of State to do something that we ought to do anyway. If the Secretary of State considers it appropriate, the amendment also suggests that they take the steps identified in that consideration and produce a report setting out what steps are being taken to secure full compliance and what steps they intend to take over the next reporting period.

The Aarhus convention is important, but it has been, in some people’s eyes, somewhat overtaken by other events. Nevertheless, it remains important in international environmental considerations, and it important that it should be put into the Bill as one of the Secretary of State’s considerations to undertake.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for drawing the Committee’s attention to the Aarhus convention, which is of course an international agreement. I do not deny its importance, so he and I agree on that.

The UK ratified the convention in 2005, and we remain a party to it in our own right. Our exit from the EU does not change our commitment to respect, protect and fulfil the rights contained in this important international agreement. Implementation of the Aarhus convention is overseen by the Aarhus convention compliance committee, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs co-ordinates the UK’s ongoing engagement with the committee on our implementation and on findings pertaining to the UK on specific issues. The committee has welcomed the willingness of the United Kingdom to discuss compliance issues in a constructive manner.

Clause 20 requires the Government to review significant developments in international environmental protection legislation, as we discussed. The findings of that review will then be used to inform Government policy on environmental protections, enabling the UK to stay at the forefront of international best practice on environmental protection. The amendment would require that report to include material about existing obligations under the Aarhus convention, not new, innovative developments in environmental protection legislation. That would dilute the purpose of the clause. We independently meet our convention obligations, and there is no need to amend clause 20 to ensure that we continue to do so.

Amendment 97 is unnecessary, as the provisions of the Aarhus convention already fall within the remit of the OEP, where they have been given effect in UK law and meet the definition of environmental law. The OEP will improve access to justice: it will receive complaints free of charge to complainants and will have powers to investigate and enforce compliance with environmental law by public authorities. The OEP will be legally required to keep complainants informed about the handling of their complaints, and it will also have to produce public statements when it takes enforcement action, unless it would not be in the public interest to do so. In addition, public authorities that have been subject to legal proceedings by the OEP will be required to publish a statement setting out the steps they intend to take in the light of the outcome of the proceedings.

Given that we are already engaged with the convention committee on our obligations, the amendments are unnecessary. I ask the hon. Gentlemen not to press them.

[Dr Whitehead]

I appreciate that the Minister has already replied, but I wonder whether she could—

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[Dr Whitehead]

Has the Minister thought about the extent to which the Aarhus convention is fully implemented in the UK, either via retained EU law or the existing domestic system? In terms of her response to this debate, was she saying that it is the case that the Aarhus convention is now fully implemented in UK law?

[Rebecca Pow]

I know I am not able to speak again, but perhaps the shadow Minister will allow me to intervene on him—I think I will have to put this in the form of a question, which makes it quite tricky, Mr Gray. Does the shadow Minister agree that the UK’s commitment to the Aarhus convention is unaffected by EU exit, because the UK is a party to the convention in its own right?

[Dr Whitehead]

That is true, but nevertheless there is the question of the extent to which that commitment itself is a freestanding commitment or additional, via EU retained law. I think the Minister will agree that there is EU retained law in respect of the Aarhus convention. While it is true that we are an individual signatory to it, we were also effectively a joint signatory to it through the EU joint law arrangement. Therefore, we were actually twofold signatories, as far as the Aarhus convention is concerned. Does the fact that we are now a onefold signatory to the Aarhus convention fully replace what it was that we were originally as a twofold signatory to the Aarhus convention? I think the Minister was saying yes, but I am not absolutely certain that that is the case.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope the Minister will agree that that is an omission from the Bill that needs putting right. In practice, I do not think it would make an enormous amount of difference, but constitutionally it could make an enormous amount of difference. If we do not have this in the legislation, there is the possibility that the Secretary of State could decide in the absence of any parliamentary scrutiny or discussion of what he or she will do, and thereby subvert some of the Bill’s good intentions on environmental protection. The Office for Environmental Protection has to be the centrepiece of protection activity; to do that, it needs not only theoretical independence, but stated independence, laid down in legislation concerning its activities for environmental protection.

[Rebecca Pow]

I will keep my comments to what the amendment refers to, which is the involvement of the Environmental Audit Committee and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that Parliament should have a role in the process of making significant public appointments. To scrutinise key appointments made by Ministers is a proper role for Parliament. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and the Environmental Audit Committee—I am proud to have been a member of both, and many hon. Members here are members of those Committees—will jointly carry out a pre-appointment hearing with the Secretary of State’s preferred candidate for the OEP chair.

As the shadow Minister knows, there has already been a lot of discussion about this. This is a commitment. The Secretary of State will duly consider any recommendation made by the Committees.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

The Minister says that the preferred candidate can be scrutinised. Is that not a bit of a Hobson’s choice?

[Rebecca Pow]

This is an open and fair process, and other appointments are duly scrutinised in that way. The considerations and views of both Committees will be taken extremely seriously because the work they do is very pertinent to the work in this sphere of Government. The OEP chair is then consulted by the Secretary of State on the appointments of the non-executive members. We do not believe it necessary or desirable for Parliament to scrutinise all those individual appointments in the way that has been suggested.

Ministers are accountable and responsible to Parliament for public appointments, and they should therefore retain the ability to make the final determinations. Ultimately, Ministers are accountable to Parliament and the public for the overall performance of the public body and of public money. The OEP will be added to the schedule of the Public Appointments Order in Council and so will be independently regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The Secretary of State will be required to act in accordance with the governance code, including with the principles of public appointments, which would ensure that members are appointed through a fair and open process.

The chair of the OEP will be classed as a significant appointment, requiring a senior independent panel member, approved by the commissioner, to sit on the advisory assessment panel, which can report back to the commissioner on any breaches of process. We have also introduced, in paragraph 17, a duty on the Secretary of State to have regard to the need to the need to protect the OEP’s independence in exercising functions in respect of the OEP, including on public appointments.

Those arrangements, and the requirements in the Bill, provide the appropriate balance between parliamentary oversight and ministerial accountability, while ensuring that appointments to the OEP are made fairly and on merit. I therefore request that the hon. Member for Southampton, Test withdraw his amendment.

[Richard Graham]

Will the Minister give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Select Committees pressed for that scrutiny and they have welcomed the fact that they will be able to scrutinise the potential chair. They did some prelegislative scrutiny of the Bill; that was one of their recommendations and we accepted it. It has gone down extremely well. I want to back up the comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester in terms of what is being put in place. I am sure the shadow Minister, when he fully understands the process, will agree with me that the purpose is that non-exec members in particular are appointed on a fair and open basis, regulated through our public appointments process.

[Dr Whitehead]

I am not suggesting that anything is other than that, and I am not suggesting that the Select Committees are anything other than pleased with what they have undertaken to do and the welcome their work has received from the Government. However, the Minister, in a sense, answered her own question by stating that the Select Committees pushed for that. That is what Select Committees do, and they have the power to summon all sorts of people. In this instance, as far as I understand—I may not have fully understood the process—the Select Committees in their power as Select Committees in general pushed for the hearing and Ministers thought that was a good idea and they went ahead with it. To that extent, yes, things have gone well, but it is still not in the Bill that that should ever happen. It is entirely down to the Select Committees. We should not do it that way round.

[Rebecca Pow]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree with me that the very fact that that has happened demonstrates that Select Committees are taken seriously? As such, the measure in the Bill is sensible, serious and fair.

[Dr Whitehead]

As it happens, yes. However, again, we are in “as it happens” territory, which we seem to be in rather a lot this afternoon. As it happens, yes, that appears to be working quite well. I do not know, should there be a future reconstitution of the Office for Environmental Protection or future appointments of non-exec members and the chair, whether that procedure would necessarily be replicated. It might be; it might not. We are lucky we have Select Committees that are as strong as they are.

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[Daniel Zeichner]

There has not been any comment yet on the extraordinary situation we find ourselves in. We are just 55 days away from the end of the year and the new situation that we are about to embark upon, and there is nothing in place. That is part of the problem. It is a shambles, quite frankly, that we are leaving the European Union and entering a period where it is unclear how our environmental protections will work. I suggest much more will be said about that as we go through our debates.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test and the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire have said, this is a key moment in setting the path ahead for this new organisation. This provision feeds into this general sense that, far from having a much more sophisticated and wider way of approaching these issues, it all comes down to centralising power in the hands of the Secretary of State to determine the way forward. That cannot be right and I think there is genuine outrage among many who are looking at how this process is unfolding.

We have gone from helping to establish strong environmental principles as a leading player in the European Union to the extraordinary position we find ourselves in. We have no idea how long this is going to take. Is it going to be in place? Perhaps the Minister could tell us. Perhaps things are in train and we are waiting for announcements. Perhaps it will happen next week or in January, or perhaps it will not happen for months and months. In the meantime, many of our own protections are in limbo, effectively.

The schedule gives us no confidence that the Government even have a plan for where we are going with this. I hope the Minister can give us some reassurances, because many of my constituents—and, I suspect, many constituents of other Members—are really worried about these issues. At a time of climate crisis and biodiversity emergency, how can we possibly be setting an example to the rest of the world as we approach COP26 when we are in this shambolic position, with the suggestion that this so-called independent agency should effectively be run by the Secretary of State?

[Rebecca Pow]

There have been some fiery comments about this particular amendment, Chair.

I welcome the support of the hon. Member for Southampton, Test for our inclusion in the Bill of a mechanism to appoint an interim chief executive of the OEP. I want to give some reassurances that establishing this independent body that can hold future Governments to account is of crucial importance. That remains very much in focus when considering this power for the Secretary of State to appoint an interim chief executive.

The initial role of the interim chief executive would be to take urgent administrative decisions to ensure that the OEP is up and running as soon as possible, which I know is a key concern of Members. I want to say a little about that role and why it is necessary. Such decisions would include staff recruitment and other matters related to setting up the new body. I welcome the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire, who has a lot of experience in setting up these bodies. It is a fully practical step to help with the interim period. By way of background information for the hon. Member for Cambridge—he raised some pertinent points—we intend that the permanent chief executive will be in place no later than autumn 2021, and the proposed timeline then allows for the OEP chair to lead the appointment of that chief executive.

By way of more background, the Secretary of State has asked officials to assemble a team of staff within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs group, to be funded from the Department’s budget, to receive and validate any complaints against the criteria for complaining to the OEP; so there will be a team in place in the interim. A lot of work has gone on behind the scenes but we had a lull because of the coronavirus, so it is nobody’s fault that this has happened. Obviously, other structures and plans are being put in place, but that is why details of an interim chief executive have had to be considered. That power will be required for the interim chief executive only in the event that a quorate board is not in place in time to make the decisions. If the board is quorate in time, it will be able to make its own arrangements. During any period when they are making administrative decisions on behalf of the OEP before the board is quorate, the interim chief executive must be capable of being held to account. That is essential good governance and oversight of public funds. That is why we are giving the Secretary of State, as the accountable Minister, the power to direct the interim chief executive during that period.

The shadow Minister was, if I may say so, making some slightly malign intimations about what he potentially thought the Secretary of State had in mind in controlling the interim chief executive. I would like to set all those thoughts and views aside—that is not the purpose; it is a practical arrangement. I would like to give more reassurance on two point. First, the Bill provides for the interim chief executive to report to the OEP’s board, not the Secretary of State, as soon as the board is quorate. Secondly, the Government will not commence the OEP’s statutory functions before the OEP is quorate. Therefore, the interim chief executive will only be able to make decisions relating to the OEP’s statutory functions when they report to a quorate board, not to the Secretary of State. Therefore, the Secretary of State will not have any power of direction over the OEP’s statutory functions. It is important to make that clear. Amendment 154 is, consequently, unnecessary and I ask the hon. Member to withdraw it.

[Dr Whitehead]

I wonder whether the Minister has considered at what point the interim chief executive of the OEP must be in place, bearing in mind that the actual chief executive is not to be appointed until next August. The OEP, which is essential, should be operational from 1 January—indeed, we have had assurances on that—because of the differences in environmental protection that may result from our leaving the EU, and so not having areas of EU law available for environmental protection purposes, which are supposed to be replaced by, among other things, the independence of the OEP, to ensure that those areas of law are fully upheld.

The Minister appears to be telling us that there will be something like an OEP in existence from 1 January, and that it will have something like an interim chief executive to run it—indeed, I understand that a lot of work on that has already been done—but that during that entire period the OEP will not be independent, because effectively it will be run by the Secretary of State. That may be a function of the fact that the process is dragging on in a way that we did not anticipate, and that the Minister probably did not anticipate, overlapping the period when lots of work should have been under way to get this system going, to ensure a seamless change on 1 January. Instead we will have a raggedy process that is a very, very long way from any of the aspirations that were expressed for the OEP—the way it will operate, what it will do in terms of environmental protection, and its independence of the Secretary of State.

I accept that when a new organisation is set up—as the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire said, and he has experience of these matters—there can be issues. If someone is setting up, say, a new subsidiary company, the board of the company that is setting up the new company will appoint a chief executive of that subsidiary company, and while that chief executive is getting in place it is quite reasonable for the board of the superior or parent company to expect that person to be responsible to the superior or parent company as the new company is being set up. Only if, for example, at a later date Chinese walls are inserted between the operation of the subsidiary and that of the superior or parent company does that reporting go adrift; but that is only when things are properly set up.

We are not in that situation here. We said from the word go that we would set up an independent body that would be responsible for all the environmental legislation that has come over to us from the EU, which is now bedding down in UK law, and that that responsibility needed to be exercised from day one of that transfer.

[Rebecca Pow]

Does the shadow Minister not agree that an unprecedented and unexpected incident has occurred? We have had the coronavirus pandemic. In the light of that, does he not agree that arrangements are well under way for setting up the OEP, and that the Government fully intend—I have given more details today—to introduce the OEP by 2021? Because of the pause in consideration of the Bill and because of the coronavirus, we cannot confirm the exact date, but we will implement—indeed, are implementing—bona fide transitional arrangements, with a secretariat that will support the OEP chair. The chair is currently being sought, through a public appointments campaign. The whole system is in process. We will have an interim chief executive and my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire understands exactly the role of that person. There is nothing malignant about it, and the Secretary of State will certainly not control him. Does the hon. Member agree that I made that quite clear in my speech just now?

[Dr Whitehead]

Well, I hope the Secretary of State will not be controlling him. [Interruption.] Or her. I hope the Secretary of State will scrupulously keep his or her hands out of controlling that person. I am pleased to hear assurances from the Minister that that may well be the case—in terms of the Minister’s bona fides, I would expect nothing less. That is what the Minister should be saying, because that has always been her commitment on the OEP in the past; but that does not in any way excuse the fact that it says something opposite on the face of the Bill. That is the issue that, as legislators, we need to look at.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Browne]

I will just make one observation, speaking as somebody who has hired various chief executives for other organisations. On the boards that I have been on, the recruitment processes for external chief executives has taken at least three months just to identify the candidate. The sort of people we are looking for are often on notice periods of three or six months, so we are really talking about a minimum of six months, maybe nine months—quite probably a year—to hire the substantive chief executive.

Do we want to sit around doing nothing, with no organisation and no one doing anything for a year or nine months, while we hire the substantive chief executive? I agree with the principle, but what is more important is getting the machinery up and running, the cog wheels going and the pieces in place, and doing the recruitment of the substantive chief executive in the meantime. When we finally appoint them, which might well be six or nine months later, they will then have a skeletal organisation to run.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for Southampton, Test for his interest in the interim chief executive’s role and the Secretary of State’s power to appoint them. I reiterate what I mentioned in our debate on amendment 154: that the role of the interim chief executive is to take the urgent administrative decisions required to ensure that the OEP is up and running on time. That power will be required only in the event that a quorate board is not in place soon enough to make those decisions; that is the crucial point. If the Secretary of State is required to consult the chair on the appointment, the power may not be worth exercising, because we expect the board to become quorate soon after the chair starts in post.

Amendment 155 actually has the potential to delay the appointment of the interim chief executive, which I think is what my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire was alluding to. That would actually defeat the point of appointing one. He or she might be there for just a couple of days.

[Richard Graham]

The only disappointing aspect of this debate has been a relatively determined approach by some Opposition hon. Members in trying to demonstrate that the independence of this new Office for Environmental Protection will be somehow compromised from the start. Does my hon. Friend agree that, actually, what is being put in place is a pragmatic approach to try to get something up and running as fast as possible, given the extraordinary circumstances of this year, and that to do anything else would only delay things and be counterproductive? We all want the same end; this is the best way to do it.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention; I could not have put it better myself. I feel that I am under a certain amount of attack here. This is all being put into place so that we can get things up and running. As everyone knows, we are in an extraordinary time. I know the shadow Minister said that the provision was in there anyway as a failsafe, in case we needed this interim set-up. It could well have never been needed to be used, but it is there in case we need it.

We want the OEP to get off to a good start. When the chair is appointed—as I said, that process is well under way—we want them to be the person to appoint what I would call the first real chief executive. That is the right process. I think we would all agree with that. The requirement in the amendment would be disproportionate to how long the interim post might be there, because we expect this chief executive to be fully in place during 2021.

I must clarify another separate point. Although it would be a short-term role, the interim chief would be able to make decisions on behalf of the OEP, but they would be just set-up decisions. That is also why—I allude again to my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire—we need to get the right person in place, because they have a lot of work to do to put the tools in place. Allowing for the successful candidate not to be an employee of the OEP, such as a civil servant on secondment, helps to widen the field of candidates. We need to ensure that the person has the right skills to swing into action very quickly and get this whole system set up.

I remind the shadow Minister that the Secretary of State is subject to parliamentary scrutiny—there is a long process by which that will happen—concerning all the decisions taken in respect of the OEP. I have a page I could read about how the OEP will be independent, but I am sure we will get into that in discussing other clauses. The Secretary of State would be legally required to have regard for the need to protect the OEP’s independence in making this appointment, as required by paragraph 17 of schedule 1 to the Bill. The amendment is unnecessary and I ask the hon. Member for Southampton, Test to withdraw it.

[Dr Whitehead]

The Minister spoke of the importance of getting things done now. After all the problems we have had, I cannot for the life of me see how that is in any way impacted by the idea that the chair of the OEP, who will shortly be in place, should have a say in deciding—guidance has properly been put in for the independence of the OEP—whether long-term recruits should not be from the civil service or any other external persons. Why should the chair not have that say in an appointment?

I assume that the chair of the OEP would be equally concerned to ensure that things are up and running as quickly as possible, that a proper and good appointment is made of an interim chief executive, and that, if a good case is put forward, that appointment might be of someone in the civil service or another person in the Department.

The amendment does not stop any of those things from happening; it merely says, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge mentioned, that if it is the intention that the OEP will be truly independent it is the look of the thing from the beginning that will convince people of that.

I do not think that we can duck the issue. There are a lot of people out there who are profoundly suspicious and concerned that the OEP will not have its independence and will not be able to act as an environmental watchdog in the way that is claimed. Indeed, they will have suspicions, many of which we do not share, that a lot of what is being done is to undermine that independence, and—I would not go so far as to say to strangle the OEP at birth—to clutch the OEP much more closely to the bosom of Government than might have otherwise been the intention.

I hear what the Minister says about the fact that it was extremely fortunate that the provisions in the Bill were there anyway, which sort of came to the rescue when we were in the position of having to do these things very much at the last minute, rather than in a more considered way over a longer period. The fact that they have always been here, and always allowed that to happen, increases some of the suspicions out there. It is our duty, and would at least be good sense, for us to dispel those suspicions as early as we can in the life of the OEP.

Accepting the amendment would not, therefore, be a big deal. I do not intend to divide the Committee yet again, because we have made our point by dividing the Committee on other amendments, but this one is entirely on the same theme. I enjoin the Minister to think again about whether she wants to introduce something at a later date in proceedings that at least waves a flag in the direction of proper independence for the OEP as it gets under way, in addition to when it is fully under way. That would be very helpful for all of us who are concerned, in terms of what we will try to do to ensure that the OEP does its job properly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Deidre Brock]

I beg to move amendment 188, in schedule 1, page 124, line 26, at end insert—

“10A Where the function is being exercised in relation to Scotland or in Scotland the OEP must—

(a) delegate the function to an environmental governance body designated by the Scottish Ministers, and

(b) provide the resources for that function to be exercised.”

This amendment aims to introduce the geographical imperative to ensure clear lines of reporting and response in Scotland and to clarify that the body acting in Scotland will be acting with consent of Scottish Ministers, thus respecting the devolution settlement.

Clearly, the Bill before us is applicable largely to this place because, as I have already referenced, environmental policy is, in the main, devolved. There are, however, still areas here and there within the Bill that require a little tidying to ensure that there is no danger of devolved regulatory powers being affected or even overridden inadvertently.

The amendment ensures that on the rare occasions when the OEP acts in Scotland, it will do so only with the consent of Scottish Ministers. In fact, amendments 190 and 191 also seek to respect the devolved Administration in Scotland.

Amendment 188 is about respecting the devolved Administration in Scotland, ensuring that the regulatory functions remain with the Scottish regulator, as is currently the case. It is about the Scottish Parliament and Government forging a different kind of future that will keep driving forward improvements in environmental policy. It means, too, that the Scottish regulator—currently the Scottish Environment Protection Agency—would maintain a holistic view of environmental policy in Scotland. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith. The amendment gives me a good opportunity to demonstrate that the Government’s new environmental governance framework respects the devolved settlements. She will be aware that the environment is largely a devolved matter and, as such, it is for each Administration to develop and deliver their own environmental governance proposal in relation to the devolved functions.

The Bill therefore makes a clear distinction between devolved and non-devolved functions, and we have ensured that the OEP can cover England and any matters across the wider UK that have not been devolved. That is necessary, as non-devolved matters cannot be addressed by the devolved Administration’s own governance arrangements once these ones are in place.

We expect that all the remaining devolved matters that fall outside the remit of the OEP will be addressed by the devolved Administration’s governance proposals in due course. Indeed, we welcome the steps that Scotland has taken to establish its own environmental body. The Bill is drafted in such a way as to ensure that the OEP can exercise its functions only on matters that are not devolved in respect of Scotland, so it would be inappropriate to delegate such functions to Environmental Standards Scotland, the intended equivalent Scottish body, to deliver those functions.

We do, none the less—and I did want to be at pains to say this—expect that the OEP will work harmoniously and productively with equivalent bodies in the devolved Administrations. That is obviously really important, since we cannot control the air, water or lots of things like that: in many cases, we will be working in tandem. That is why in clause 40(2)(f) we have made provision for the OEP to share information with its devolved equivalents and why in clause 24(4) we have placed a duty on it to consult them on any relevant matters.

Beyond the provisions already in the Bill, the OEP and its equivalent bodies will also have discretion to jointly decide how best to co-ordinate these activities. The OEP has been carefully designed to respect the devolution settlements by limiting its scope to environmental law, the definition of which specifically excludes matters falling within the devolved competence in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

The Government consider it inappropriate and contrary to the delineation of legislative responsibilities under the devolution settlements to delegate the OEP’s functions in this context. I thank the hon. Member for raising this issue, because I want to be at pains to be clear about how we are working with the devolved Administrations, but I believe the amendment is unnecessary. I ask her to kindly withdraw it.

[Deidre Brock]

I have great respect for the Minister and for her sincerity—I genuinely do. I think she absolutely means what she says and she absolutely thinks that the way things are at the moment under her ministerial leadership will remain the same forever.

I am afraid that, ultimately, her suggestions do not cut the mustard with me, because environmental policy is devolved to Scotland. The amendment simply requires that, rather than Scottish Ministers just being consulted, they are actually required to give some sort of consent. As the amendment says in sub-paragraph (a), whatever the environmental issue is, the function should be put to a

“body designated by the Scottish Ministers”.

Without that agreement from the Government, I am afraid that I will have to ask that the amendment be put to a vote. Things are either devolved or they are not. I do not think that whether the Government at the time feel that they have a greater locus in an area than the devolved Government in place at the time should be part of the consideration. It is important that the responsibility for environmental policy that rests with devolved Governments is fully respected and that the agreement of the Scottish Government is sought in all instances to do with environmental policy.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Local Clean Air Targets

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

Sir Charles, you are making it sound as if you do not want to listen to me for 15 minutes. Now I think I will make sure that I do go on for 15 minutes.

It is an absolute pleasure to see you in the chair, Sir Charles. I thank the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) for securing the debate and for the moderate way in which he led it. It is a subject on which we all agree and which is very serious. He recognised that air pollution is the single greatest environmental risk to human health, as many hon. Members from both sides said.

Air pollution has reduced significantly over the decades, but there is much more to do, as has been highlighted today. That is why the Government have a clear ambition and policy agenda to clean up our air. I will be touching on lots of parts of that today. A key part is funding for the nitrogen dioxide plan. We have put in place a £3.8 billion plan to help to improve air quality and clean up transport. A number of hon. Members have suggested that those issues are somehow separate, but we have two huge funds. I am working closely with the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) and our joint air quality unit, so that they are increasingly joined up.

As part of this, we are tackling the nitrogen dioxide concentrations around roads—the only statutory air quality limit that the UK is currently failing to meet. We have actually made great strides in tackling nitrogen dioxide since 2010, and levels have fallen by 33%. We are working really hard with local authorities to help them to tackle the hot spots and to reach compliance with the nitrogen dioxide limits in the shortest possible time.

We have contributed £880 million to support local authorities in developing and implementing measures to improve air quality, as well as supporting many individuals and businesses. The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) mentioned grassroots, that the initiative has to come locally and local authorities have to be helped, but there is a great deal of Government funding and the initiative really is for solutions to come from the bottom up.

The Government have already given over £394 million of that funding to support a wide range of initiatives including bus retrofits, taxi upgrades and traffic management measures. In addition, the Government are investing £2.5 billion through the transforming cities fund to support several cities—including Manchester—to improve their transport systems. This fund was a particular focus for my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon), who is a very strong voice for her area, highlighting the potential benefits it could offer to a place like Stoke-on-Trent, as it has done for Manchester, so I urge her to keep fighting for that fund and doing the good work she is doing.

The Prime Minister also recently announced a £5 billion investment to deliver cleaner buses and improved services, as well as to boost cycling and walking, to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles. A further £1 billion was introduced in the March Budget to extend the plug-in vehicle grants to 2023 and support the roll-out of electric vehicle infrastructure. I think hon. Members will agree that this is a significant amount of funding.

I have just transferred to a long-term electric car rental, a very interesting piece of research I am carrying out myself. I was interested to hear that the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington has ditched his car altogether. Electric vehicles will really help us shift to cleaner air and meet our carbon targets in the medium term.

We need action now, however, and in recent weeks we have had announcements about the first charging clean air zones to be implemented in my old home, Bath and North East Somerset, and Birmingham. Several other local authorities, including Greater Manchester, are expected to follow with similar schemes in 2021 and 2022.

[Stephen Doughty]

rose—

[Rebecca Pow]

Does the hon. Member mind if I press on? I want to make it clear that the Government are acutely aware of the economic impact that charging zones can have on local businesses and residents, and the fact that those impacts are further heightened by the coronavirus pandemic. It was touched on that the pandemic may have highlighted how air quality affects health and a lot of work is under way and ongoing with the Department of Health and the expert group that has been looking into the effects of the air quality and coronavirus on people’s health. There is no clear evidence of an exact link yet, but the work is continuing so we can have a clear picture.

There is always a preference for non-charging measures where they can be identified, and measures that can be effected before charging is put in place. In Leeds, where a charging clean air zone was to be introduced next year, data demonstrates that it is no longer needed, partly because allocated funds have been used to upgrade bus and taxi fleets relatively quickly, and that has had an enormous impact on the city’s clean air zone. It will still receive funding to make sure that it keeps to its commitments in the future and is still tackling air quality.

In Greater Manchester—on which we have been focusing today—the clean air zone, as the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington mentioned, is scheduled to be implemented in 2022. The 10 local authorities involved have been working on this enormous project—it is a huge area—to take the action that they need. Their local modelling found that nitrogen dioxide concentrations were higher and more widespread across the region than was predicted by our modelling. We have been working very closely with them and I really welcome the launch of the consultation on 8 October, which runs until 3 December. I also welcome that the hon. Member has encouraged people to take part in that consultation because we want everyone to get involved. We want it to be effective—as does he. The zone will cover the whole of the Greater Manchester region, charging non-compliant heavy goods vehicles, vans, buses, taxis and private hire vehicles from early 2022, with an exemption for vans until 2023. As the hon. Member pointed out, private cars will not be charged for entering the zone.

To touch on funding, we have already provided £77 million to Greater Manchester to implement the clean air zone, and a total of £36 million of this funding has been provided towards the implementation of the zone, while £41 million from our clean air fund has been provided to support the retrofitting of buses and to help the owners of heavy goods vehicles, coaches, minivans and private hire vehicles.

I understand that the Greater Manchester authorities are developing their funding schemes with a view to launching this as soon as possible once plans have finalised. Given the lessons we have learned from Leeds, I urge that the money is put into operation as soon as possible, as that does seem to have more of an effect.

Many hon. Members mentioned the encouragement of active travel—of cycling and walking—and how we really noticed, during the lockdown period, more and more people taking that up. In fact, I think that for four months I only ever used my bike and did not get into my car; it was an absolute joy to do my shopping and everything else in that way. I have already touched on the £2 billion package for that, and we do need to build on that paradigm shift we need in behaviour to get people out of cars and into walking and cycling, but we can only do that with the funds the Government have provided.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) mentioned the transforming cities fund and how useful it could be to an area such as Stoke-on-Trent; he was very passionate about his area, as he always is. I met with colleagues from Stoke-on-Trent yesterday—we have met a number of times before and will continue to work very closely, as we are doing with all colleagues with a clean air zone—to ensure that we get the plan and project that will suit their particular area, because every area is different.

Several hon. Members—including the shadow Minister: I am very pleased to see her in her place—mentioned the issue of Highways England controlling the strategic routes. I met Highways England recently—along with the Under-Secretary of State for Transport—to raise this issue of whether it could get more involved in those roads, because so many of them cut right through, for example, areas in Manchester and other cities. There is ongoing work with Highways England on that issue.

Before I finish, I must touch on the Environment Bill—which I think was referred to as the “missing in action Bill”; it will soon be an “in action Bill”. There are not many more days to wait; we have the out-date and the in-date will become clear very soon. Aside from all of the work we are doing on the clean air strategy to help air quality, we have our landmark Environment Bill, which will introduce a duty on the Government to set a legally binding target on fine particulate matter. That demonstrates our commitment to tackling air pollution as that is the most damaging pollutant to human health. The Bill includes a duty to set a long-term target for air quality, showing our absolute commitment. As well as setting new concentration target for PM2.5, which will act as a minimum standard across the country, we propose to break new ground and develop an additional target aimed at reducing average population exposure to PM2.5 across England. The target will drive continuous improvement across all areas of the country, and I think it will be a big step forward.

I hear calls to put the World Health Organisation guidelines straight into law, as suggested by the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe). The point is—she has heard me say this before—that the WHO itself acknowledged that guidelines should inform the setting of the air quality standards; they are not targets ready for adoption. Additionally, evidence suggests that there is no PM2.5 level under which no health impacts could happen. The hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) also mentioned that. It is too simplistic to say that simply adopting those guidelines is the solution. That is why we are setting this system of getting expert advice through, once the Environment Bill has set the target, so that we can work towards achieving what we must on that.

In the Environment Bill, we are setting legal requirements for positive change for local authorities, so that they have more effective powers and a clearer framework for tackling air pollution in their areas. In short, those are responsibilities across local government structures shared with relevant public authorities, and there is a call for evidence out on that, to work out which bodies are relevant. To support these changes, we will also introduce a requirement to revise and publish a national air quality strategy and review it every five years.

[Stephen Doughty]

The Minister has not touched on incinerators at all. Does she have any thoughts on that, given the multiple incinerators near her own Taunton Deane constituency in Bridgwater and Avonmouth and across the Severn in my constituency?

[Rebecca Pow]

I was just coming to the hon. Gentleman’s comments, in which he mentioned incinerators, as he often has before. Most of the incinerators he referred to are in Wales. This is a devolved issue in Wales and Northern Ireland. All energy-generating waste plants in England already comply with strict emission limits under the environmental permitting regulations. The UK puts itself at the forefront of reducing industrial pollution with an appropriate framework for regulation. Industry is being very innovative in this space and we are moving in that direction.

To return to the Environment Bill, it contains a measure to recall non-compliant vehicles and road mobile machinery, and to end the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2023.

I cannot end without mentioning the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). As ever, he made an eloquent contribution. Air pollution policy is devolved in Northern Ireland, but it is always really useful to learn lessons from other places, as it was from Scotland, particularly the hydrogen model, which we are looking at. Our transformation of the energy system is neutral, but it is interesting to hear what is happening on the hydrogen buses.

I thank the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington for his clear speech today, and for standing up for this important issue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to increase tree planting in England.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

We are committed to increasing tree planting throughout the UK to 30,000 hectares per year by 2025, and we are working with the devolved Administrations on that, too. We have announced a nature for climate fund to increase planting in England, and we recently consulted on the new England tree strategy.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Across the valley of the River Severn, the River Teme and the River Avon we are grateful for the support we are getting to improve our flood defences. Will the Minister tell the House how tree planting can improve flood resilience across river catchments?

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. Our new £640 million nature for climate fund will do a lot to drive up tree planting. We will also do a lot of planting with the emphasis on river corridors and floodplains and on nature-based solutions, working with the Environment Agency. In that way, we aim to slow the flow, control flooding and increase tree planting. Lots of plans are in place, and I hope my hon. Friend’s constituency will benefit.

[Jane Stevenson]

I am absolutely thrilled that the Government-funded National Brownfield Institute will soon open in Wolverhampton North East. Will the Minister tell me how, as we move forward in the Black Country with building sustainable homes on reclaimed land, we can ensure that tree planting is not forgotten in new developments on brownfield sites?

[Rebecca Pow]

We are very much looking forward to Wolverhampton’s National Brownfield Institute coming to fruition and to all the work it will do on sustainable development. Of course, trees will be an important part of sustainable development. This issue was referred to in our England tree strategy, and we are exploring ways to incorporate trees into the development of brownfield sites.

[Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)]

What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the level of air pollution from motor vehicles since covid-19 lockdown restrictions were eased in August 2020.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

Nitrogen oxide levels are rising again after lockdown as traffic levels increase. We continue to take urgent action to curb the impact of air pollution on communities throughout England through our ambitious clean air strategy and the delivery of a £3.8 billion plan to clean up transport and tackle NOx pollution. The Government continue to engage with local authorities to deliver clean air zones, and through the Environment Bill we will take greater action on tackling air pollution.

[Kate Osborne]

As the north-east seeks to reduce its level of air pollution, will the Minister join me in supporting initiatives such as that proposed for the Tyne tunnel, where a new free-flow payment system will reduce carbon emissions from vehicles using the tunnel by a massive 90%? Furthermore, will the Minister commit to working with colleagues in the Department for Transport to ensure that orders to implement the system are introduced to the House when available, so that air quality improves in the Jarrow constituency and in the region more widely?

[Rebecca Pow]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. I am really heartened that she is thinking about the health of her constituents, because air pollution, especially fine particulate matter, is the single greatest health impact that we currently have to deal with. I would be happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss any actions. She is absolutely right to point out that her local authority is taking action on many of these measures. The Government have provided a number of funds to support local work on reducing pollution levels in traffic.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

What plans the Government has to reduce air pollution.

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

What plans the Government has to reduce air pollution.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

I am like a jack-in-a-box this morning, Mr Speaker, with one question after another.

Our clean air strategy sets out an ambitious programme of action to reduce air pollution from a wide range of sources. We have also put in place a £3.8 billion plan to tackle roadside nitrogen dioxide concentrations. The Environment Bill makes a clear commitment to set a legally binding target to reduce fine particulate matter and will enable local authorities to take more effective action to combat pollution in their areas.

[Ellie Reeves [V]]

Prior to covid-19, polluted air was contributing to more than 40,000 premature deaths each year. It we are to reduce that awful statistic, we must set enforceable targets to bring air pollution down below harmful levels, so does the Minister agree that the Government’s Environment Bill must have air quality targets that follow World Health Organisation guidance and have an attainment deadline of 2030 or before?

[Rebecca Pow]

The Environment Bill does introduce a duty to set a target for PM_2.5. We are committing to ambitious action on this pollutant, which has the most significant impact on health. The Government are committed to an evidence-based policy on this issue. We will consider the WHO guideline levels when setting our targets, but it is imperative that we take all the right advice from all those who are working on the issue before we commit exactly to what we are going to do and how we are going to do it.

[Mr Speaker]

We remain in Lewisham with Vicky Foxcroft.

[Vicky Foxcroft [V]]

This just shows how important this issue is to the people of Lewisham.

New data published by City Hall on 3 October show a dramatic improvement in London’s air quality since 2016 due in no small part to the ambitious measures implemented by Mayor Sadiq Khan. However, air pollution remains a major public health challenge and complacency is not an option, despite the current crisis. Will the Government commit to setting ambitious national targets and give local authorities the powers and the funding that they need to achieve them?

[Rebecca Pow]

I want to highlight that, through our landmark Environment Bill, we will be delivering on parts of our clean air strategy, which will introduce a target for concentration levels of PM_2.5. We will be setting an additional long-term target on air quality, which actually goes beyond the EU requirement. We will also have in the Bill measures that will improve local air quality management frameworks used by local authorities to make them much simpler and easier to use, and all of those measures will tackle the issues that the hon. Lady so rightly raises.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

Campaigners, activists and our constituents are all waiting with bated breath for the return of the Environment Bill, which has dropped off the Order Paper for more than 200 days now and counting. When the Bill finally returns to the House, will the Minister commit to including the World Health Organisation’s guideline air pollution limits in it? She has already said today that she wants the evidence base to be in it, but the WHO has done the work, so can we not have a commitment to accept these guidelines?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Lady for asking about the Environment Bill. As we say constantly, it will be returning very soon, but we do have an out-date for it, which is 1 December, so she can just work backwards from that, and I look forward to seeing her in the Chamber. On the point about the World Health Organisation, she should remember that these are guidelines. We have been praised for our outstanding clean air strategy, which is considered world-leading, and there is an absolute commitment to this. I think she came to one of the evidence sessions where we heard how complicated it is to set the actual target. There are many contributors to this particulate matter, and we have to look at them all before we set the target.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to reduce plastic pollution.

[Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to reduce plastic pollution.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

We are committed to tackling plastic pollution. We introduced a microbeads ban and reduced single-use plastic carrier bag usage by 95% in main supermarkets. We are also increasing the single-use carrier bag charge to 10p and extending it to all retailers. We restricted the supply of plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds the other day, and we are seeking further powers in the Environment Bill to charge for single-use plastic items, making recycling more consistent, and we will be reforming packaging waste regulations.

[Mark Pawsey]

It has been suggested that one way of reducing pollution is to make greater use of oxo-degradable plastic. This involves using an additive in conventional plastics that causes them to break down and fragment into microplastics that, in the marine environment, can be digested by organisms. In addition, oxo-degradable material in the waste stream is a contaminant and causes a reduction in the levels of recycling. Will the Minister commit the Government to acting on the call from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and join the EU in banning the use of oxo-degradable plastic?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The Government recognise that innovative packaging types can help reduce the environmental impact of plastic if disposed of in the right way, and I know that he has a lot of knowledge in this area owing to his constituency connections. However, there is currently only limited reliable published evidence on the environmental impacts of oxo-biodegradable plastics—that is a mouthful. DEFRA and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy published a call for evidence last year to better understand the effects of these and compostable plastics on the environment, and we will be publishing the results later on in the autumn.

[Damien Moore]

What steps are the Government taking to ensure the responsible disposal of face masks and other personal protective equipment?

[Rebecca Pow]

Of course, that is a question that many people are thinking about, and I thank my hon. Friend for it. The covid-19 pandemic has led to an increase in PPE, but we are starting to see businesses rise to the challenge, producing items such as reusable face coverings—we are seeing a whole lot in Parliament—that can be washed and reused, but, obviously, hygiene must be taken very seriously. The Government have published guidance on the disposal of face coverings and other PPE during the pandemic.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

What steps he is taking to protect the countryside.

--- Later in debate ---

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

If he will make it his policy to publish an annual league table to assess water companies’ performance on tackling water (a) leaks and (b) wastage.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

I am back—I would like to say by popular demand, but I am not sure about that.

Water company performance data, including on leakage, is already published annually on the DiscoverWater website, and companies provide data to the Environment Agency on water losses. I encourage hon. Members to visit the DiscoverWater website.

[Rachel Hopkins]

This month’s Environment Agency report found that four out of the nine water companies are now rated as poor or requiring improvement—the worst result since 2011. Does the Minister agree that losing 3 billion litres of water a day through leakage is wholly unacceptable? Are her Government reconsidering the privatisation of water companies that have damaged the environment and left customers in my constituency with unaffordable bills?

[Rebecca Pow]

Our 2018 water conservation report sets out an ambitious target of a 50% reduction in leakage by 2050. The water companies have made progress towards this, but quite clearly, they need to do a great deal more. On water quality, in our 25-year environment plan, we aim to bring three quarters of our waters as close to their natural state as possible. However, there is clearly a great deal more to do. I have met water companies recently to rattle the cage and raise the issues. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is also meeting water companies soon to discuss the same issues.

[Grahame Morris]

I thank the Minister for that response, but daily losses through leakage did fall during the 1990s from 4.5 billion litres a day to 3 billion litres. That figure is still too high, and a recent report by the Public Accounts Committee stated that this reduction had been followed by

“a decade of complacency and inaction”.

Does the Minister agree that the Government are failing to hold the water companies to account over their inability to deal with this level of leakage?

[Rebecca Pow]

The hon. Gentleman raises a pertinent point, but the 2019 price review set out a £51 billion five-year investment package, and water companies committed to reducing leakage by 16% by 2025. They have definite goals and targets to do that, but they do indeed need to do a great deal more. We also have much discussion about reducing the overall amount of water that people use every day, with an ambition to reduce it to 110 litres a person. At the moment, it is about 143 litres, so there is a raft of measures in the water space that need to be tackled.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

A study by the National Audit Office shows that some parts of England will run out of water by 2040. Does the Minister agree that the targets set by the Department to cut water leakage in half by 2050 will be too little, too late to keep our taps running?

[Rebecca Pow]

I have already mentioned that target of a 50% leakage reduction, but that is just one of many measures. There is a whole raft of measures, as I have just explained, that we are working towards. We have the policies in place not just to reduce leakage, but to reduce consumption in an efficient way, always being mindful of consumers’ bills and always looking after the vulnerable. On top of all that, we have our flood policy statement, which looks very closely at the whole water space—where the water comes from, where it is going, where the supply is and where the reservoirs are. The Government are absolutely on the case as far as water is concerned.

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

What steps he is taking to improve animal welfare standards.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to help ensure grant schemes are available to (a) homes and (b) businesses affected by flooding.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

For localised flooding, we expect local authorities to have established contingency measures. In exceptional circumstances, the Government activate their flood recovery framework, which was last triggered following the severe flooding in February 2020. It is designed to support communities affected by meeting immediate recovery needs and comprises the community recovery grant, the business recovery grant, council tax discount schemes and business rate relief schemes. Additionally, the Government may activate a property flood resilience recovery scheme.

[Joy Morrissey]

The beautiful market town of Marlow sits adjacent to the Thames and is also on a floodplain. Can my hon. Friend assure the House that we will be fit for the future when it comes to flood defences?

[Rebecca Pow]

I would like to give my hon. Friend every assurance that we have been working extremely hard on this. The Government have doubled their funding in the next flood defence programme to £5.2 billion —more than ever before—which will better protect 336,000 properties. In the summer, we allocated £170 million to shovel-ready flood defence projects, and we have another £200 million for some innovative projects, because we realise that the demands are changing with climate change. That is why the new flood policy statement that the Secretary of State and I have worked on sets out a holistic approach to tackling this changing canvas, and nature-based solutions will be a big part of that.

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the (a) Pick for Britain scheme and (b) seasonal agricultural workers pilot scheme.

Flooding: Staffordshire

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Wednesday 7th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your auspices, Mr Hosie. This is my first time back in Westminster Hall, so I think this is quite an event for us all.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke) on securing this really important debate. She has been an assiduous proponent on behalf of her constituents, which is the right thing to do as the MP representing her area. She has bent my ear many times, it must be said, on some of the issues that she has talked about today.

I thank all hon. Friends and the shadow Minister for taking part in the debate, and showing a really strong and concerted effort on behalf of Staffordshire. I think that it demonstrates that, far from the regions not being listened to, we do listen to the regions in government. I think that our Severn colleagues would reiterate that, given the work that we have jointly all done for the Severn valley before.

In February this year, Storm Dennis brought more than 40 mm of rain in 24 hours. That deluge of rainfall over a short period caused 181 properties to flood in Staffordshire. Flooding affected properties, shops, homes, transport networks, towns, including Burton, Stafford and Rugeley, and the villages of Barton, Marchington, Handsacre, Hinksford, Rolleston and Yoxall.

I know that my hon. Friend has held a number of meetings with local residents about the impacts of the flooding. I know also that this summer she hosted a flooding roundtable with key constituents to raise these issues. I know that Staffordshire has suffered, but I do want to say that of course the Government are absolutely committed, as is the EA, to combating flooding. Flood and coastal risk management is a very high priority for Government.

We know of course that flooding has a severe impact on communities, individuals and shops. I know that from my own experience in Somerset, where we have had terrible flooding over the years. However, I am pleased to assure my hon. Friend that the existing flood defences across Staffordshire already protect 25,000 properties, and did so during the winter floods; that figure includes 4,555 in Burton-on-Trent alone.

Over the current six-year investment period, which runs to 2021, we will spend £40 million to better protect 5,500 properties from flooding, and this sum includes £37 million of direct central Government funding. We expect over the next investment period, which runs from 2021 to 2027, to invest a further £26 million, of which £24 million will be funds from central Government, and that investment will better protect over 3,000 more properties in Staffordshire from flooding. These last figures that I have just given all relate to Staffordshire, so the Government are certainly committed to providing funding in Staffordshire.

In addition to this investment in new defences, I am pleased to assure my hon. Friend that Staffordshire has also benefited from a proportion of the £120 million of recovery funding awarded by HM Treasury to repair assets damaged by the 2019 winter floods. Approximately £160,000 has been allocated to projects in Staffordshire, including on floodbank repair in Marchington, which I believe is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Kate Griffiths), on repairing flood warning telemetry at Coven, and on removing deposited silt and stone from a channel in Yoxall.

I will expand a little on some of the successful schemes. Phase 2 of the Burton-on-Trent scheme, which is the largest investment project in Staffordshire, is under construction. It will reduce flood risk for 4,555 homes and 1,000 businesses, and it will upgrade 3.7 km of existing defences. The scheme is expected to be completed in February 2021. During the February 2020 floods, the scheme continued to protect homes and worked perfectly, even during construction. I think that we can be proud of all the work that has been going on there.

In particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford mentioned the funding of, and her support for, natural flood defences. The Government are very committed to such schemes. A project that both the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust and the Environment Agency are involved with was cited by my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), who has now departed from Westminster Hall, among others. Through the new environmental land management scheme that is coming in now that we are leaving the EU, we anticipate that natural flood management will be one of the public goods that can be paid for and delivered by our farmers to help to tackle flooding. It will deliver lots of other public benefits, but it will help to tackle flooding, so I am pleased that hon. Members have raised the issue of natural flood defences.

Of course, there are still challenges and lots of those challenges have been mentioned by hon. Friends today. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford mentioned Sandyford brook and the issues there, which in October 2019, I think, affected 50 homes. I understand that the brook is a confined channel running through a densely populated area. A preliminary economic analysis has suggested a cost in the region of £2 million for that scheme, and it would provide economic benefits to the area of around £4.5 million. However, delivery will be dependent on sufficient partnership funding contributions being available, as the scheme would only be eligible for £400,000 of flood defence grant in aid under the updated partnership funding rules. I understand that the Environment Agency has been in negotiations with a potential contributor, but further negotiations are required.

I also wanted to say, because lots of colleagues have mentioned it, that the EA aims to finalise a delivery plan this autumn—autumn, going into winter—and to set up strategic delivery groups, as an opportunity to encourage local flood resilience forum partners to help deliver key activities, such as on highways issues, planning permissions and community support.

I am pleased that my hon. Friend supports the significant amount of money that the Government are pouring into flooding and flood defences. Our new £5.2 billion capital programme will continue to be allocated in accordance with DEFRA’s partnership funding policy. It is my duty as Floods Minister—I take the responsibility very seriously—to take a national perspective on flood risk management and to ensure that the available funding is fairly and consistently distributed. Although I appreciate that there can be challenges in securing the partnership funding, it would be contrary to the aims of the partnership funding policy for DEFRA to fill funding gaps for individual projects, and we have made no provision to do so.

I want to touch on my hon. Friend’s one-stop shop suggestion. I listened to her with great interest, and I definitely encourage her to continue to engage with at local level with the EA and any relevant risk management authorities. I know that we have seen successful collaborative working of this kind elsewhere in the country, particularly in the Calder valley, where the eyeoncalderdale.com website provides a one-stop shop for flood information. Clearly, solutions of this kind need to work for the community and one cannot use the same approach everywhere. I urge my hon. Friend to go and meet colleagues there in order to learn lessons from them.

Similarly, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) for his input and his kind words. There are lessons to be learned from what is being done in the Severn valley, and that partnership working will be invaluable as we go forward.

I want to touch on a couple of other issues that have been raised. The issue of blocked drains was mentioned by a number of colleagues, including my hon. Friends the Members for Burton and for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis). In August we published an independent review into surface water and drainage responsibilities, which looked at some of the complexities of determining responsibility for surface water and drainage assets. The Government have already accepted a number of recommendations from that review, including new measures to strengthen partnership working.

We are also implementing the 22 actions set out in the surface water management plan in order to improve understanding and to strengthen actions to reduce surface water where it impacts on drains. That links to the issue of who takes responsibility for what water, where and when. There seems to be a lot of angst about that, but the local sewerage network is the responsibility of the local water company. It is a risk management authority, and the Floods and Water Management Act 2010 sets out a duty to co-operate with other risk management authorities to manage flood risk, so that is for the water companies.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) touched on tree roots. He is doing exactly the right thing by getting in contact with the water company, because it is largely a local issue. I am nearing the end of my speech, but, to link to the one-stop shop suggestion, the EA runs a comprehensive flood warning system that works 24 hours a day non-stop, and 1.4 million properties are signed up to that free service. We also have a really comprehensive flood forecasting centre that is improving its services all the time.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford for securing the debate. She raised many important and interesting issues, but I hope it is clear that the Government are absolutely committed to tackling flooding and the terrible issues that people and communities face. We have upped all the funding towards that. However, if my hon. Friends have any other issues that they would like to discuss with me, they know that my door is always open.

[Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)]

I call Theo Clarke for the briefest of summings-up.

Fly-tipping: Penalties

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Thursday 1st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) on securing this debate and raising this issue. That there is such a good turnout for a Thursday Adjournment debate demonstrates how fired up people are about this issue. My inbox demonstrates that, too; it is one of the top issues I get letters about as a constituency MP and now as the litter Minister.

I agree with all Members who have contributed to the debate that fly-tipping is unacceptable, and it is worth pointing out at the outset that it is illegal. I want to give assurances that I am committed to tackling what is basically a blight on society in every way, as has been outlined by so many so vociferously in this debate.

Of course, I sympathise with the victims of fly-tipping, plenty of whom contacted me during the lockdown, among them my own father. I grew up on a farm and he has to go out weekly to tackle incidents of fly-tipping. He recounted one again this very week, when he had to get the low-loader out and drive to a very remote track—I do not know how anybody ever found it—to retrieve another load of stuff that had been dumped there, so I certainly understand the frustrations. We all want to live in a lovely environment, and lockdown has highlighted how much we value our green space and our nature.

The Government remain absolutely committed to preventing fly-tipping, and I hope that what I am going to say will give some reassurance that measures are in place. Lots of measures have been strengthened, but there are lots more measures coming on track that I believe will help. Indeed, many of them have been mentioned by my hon. Friend, and I will touch on those shortly. Equally, however, I have discovered that, as with most things we touch in government, nothing is as straightforward as it initially appears, and it is not just a simple question of raising fines. It is more complicated than that, as I have discovered, and a lot of levers need to be in place if we really are to get to grips with this—and I really hope we do get to grips with it.

The role of central Government is very much to support local action, providing the legal framework of rights, responsibilities and powers, setting the national standards, and, where possible, making sure that the costs of dealing with fly-tipping are passed on to those responsible. I thank my hon. Friend for acknowledging that the Government have already acted. Over the past five years, the Government have given new powers to local authorities to tackle fly-tipping and strengthened those already available to them, and those include enhancing powers to search and seize vehicles of suspected fly-tippers and granting the power to issue fixed penalty notices of up to £400 to those guilty of fly-tipping and, as of January 2019 to those householders whose waste is found fly-tipped.

The levels of fixed penalty notices were set following a call for evidence, and the value of fixed penalty notices for those whose waste is found fly-tipped was confirmed during a consultation in 2018. So a lot of work went into fixing those penalties when they were raised. Fixed penalty notices provide local authorities with an efficient mechanism to hold fly-tippers to account without having to go to court, which can be time-consuming, resource-intensive and expensive.

Should a local authority take someone accused of fly-tipping to court, the sentences available to the court are severe. Upon conviction in a magistrates court, fly-tipping is punishable by a fine of up to £50,000, 12 months’ imprisonment or both, and the punishments increase to an unlimited fine, up to five years’ imprisonment or both if convicted in a Crown court. Sentences for fly-tipping offences are handed down based on the environmental offences sentences guidance published by the independent Sentencing Council.

The guidance includes, however, a requirement to consider the offender’s ability to pay. Sometimes we get the criticism that the courts are not setting high enough sanctions or fully using the penalties and fines within their powers, but there is a requirement when deciding on the severity of the sentence that consideration be given to whether the accused can afford to pay the penalty, and that sometimes leads to slightly lower penalties being imposed.

In 2018-19, 2,397 prosecutions were brought against fly-tipping offenders, which was an increase on the number for 2017-18. Of those brought to court, 2,052 were issued with a fine, which was an increase of 6% compared with 2017-18. The total value of fines issued by magistrates courts also increased to just over £1 million, which was an increase of 29% compared with 2017-18. So the figures are going up and the measures are starting to work. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough will say that is not yet enough, but we are on the right trajectory.

[Matt Western]

Those figures are really interesting and pleasing to hear, but 3,000, which is the national figure, when compared with 12,200 for the number of cases in Warwickshire, obviously represents a very small percentage indeed. I hear the points being made across the Chamber, but of course we cannot bash local authorities because they have had significant budget cuts and face huge pressures. I would like to see them do more, as I am sure the Minister would too.

[Rebecca Pow]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, but there are other measures that I believe will help local authorities, and there are certain reasons why they have been unable to tackle all the incidents he mentions.

We have previously worked with the Sentencing Council to amend sentencing guidance for magistrates, but I acknowledge that the sentences handed down do not always reflect the severity of the crime committed or the costs borne by the victim. It is for this reason that the Government committed in our manifesto to increasing penalties for fly-tipping, and we acknowledged in our waste and resources strategy that there is more to do to strengthen sentences, especially in magistrates courts.

Therefore, working with our partners in the national fly-tipping prevention group, which is chaired by DEFRA, we will continue to work with the Sentencing Council and the Judicial Office to explore ways of ensuring that the penalties handed down for fly-tipping are appropriate and proportionate to the offence committed. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough raised this issue, and we are working on the sentencing, so this is in train.

The national fly-tipping prevention group has previously published a series of fly-tipping prevention guides, which include a recommendation for private landowners to consider installing appropriate deterrence signage and CCTV cameras, in recognition of the part that such measures can play. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough for his suggestions. It is important to note that increasing the penalties for fly-tipping is not the only approach that can be used to tackle this unacceptable crime. As he alluded to, our waste and resources strategy sets out our commitment to prevent, detect and deter waste crime, including fly-tipping.

The Government have been significantly impacted by coronavirus, but my officials are working hard to deliver on those commitments. Even during the lockdown we continued working on the strategy and on the waste measures. This includes developing a web-based fly-tipping toolkit to help local authorities and others, working in partnership, to tackle fly-tipping. In Hertfordshire, such an approach, using measures suggested by the toolkit, has seen incidents of fly-tipping fall by 10% in the first year. I have been asked whether this is working anywhere, and this shows that some local authorities are being successful in tackling fly-tipping. Lots of those ideas have been copied. The toolkit is still being worked on but will be available shortly. We think that it will help local authorities, for example by allowing them to follow best practice from other local authorities.

I am aware that in some instances, where a fly-tipper is taken to court, it is felt that the penalty does not always reflect the crime. Therefore, the toolkit also provide advice to local authorities taking fly-tippers to court on how to present a robust case, because often they take them to court but still they do not get the correct fine. So help and advice is out there for the local authorities too, to go armed with the right data and so on, so that the magistrates or the Crown court will give out the correct penalty or fine.

We are aware that a significant proportion of fly-tippers are those who masquerade as legitimate waste carriers before illegally dumping their customers’ waste. We are therefore working to reform the waste carrier, broker and dealer regime, and the Environment Bill, which we hope will come to Committee very soon, will contain powers to introduce the mandatory electronic tracking of waste, which will obviously be subject to consultation. That will, among other things, reduce the ability of waste criminals to hide evidence of the systematic mishandling of waste, and deter illegitimate operators from entering the sector. It will help to ensure that waste is dealt with appropriately, reducing instances where waste is not tracked and drops out of the system, which unfortunately does happen. We intend to consult on these proposals in 2021.

The Bill, which we hope will receive Royal Assent in 2021, includes a number of other measures to help tackle waste crime. As well as granting the power to regulate for the creation of a mandatory electronic waste-tracking system, it will simplify the process for enforcement authorities to enter residential or abandoned premises under a warrant without having to wait seven days. The current requirement to wait seven days enables the evidence to be hidden, removed or destroyed, so that change will be genuinely helpful. A new power will also be introduced to search for and seize evidence of waste crime. So there is a lot going on.

The Bill will reduce costs and bureaucracy when the police seize vehicles involved in waste crime on behalf of the Environment Agency. It will do so by removing the current practice whereby that is automatically done on behalf of the relevant waste collection authority unless an Environment Agency officer is present, and it will allow the police to seize a vehicle on behalf of the regulator. It should speed up the process and make it quicker and more proactive.

In addition, the Bill will allow for the level of fixed penalty notices to be amended through secondary legislation, so the calls in this place for higher penalties could become a possibility through secondary legislation. So we are listening to all these comments.

These extensive new powers, which have been widely discussed with stakeholders, will aid us in our fight to ensure that waste criminals, such as illegitimate waste operators reliant on fly-tipping for income, are held accountable for their actions.

I am pleased to update my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough on the Budget, which allocated half a million pounds in 2021 to support innovative approaches to tackling fly-tipping. We are exploring those funding opportunities and priorities right now. We are considering the role that mobile and web-based applications and research projects could play in tackling fly-tipping. As my hon. Friend mentions, our annual fly-tipping statistics currently report fly-tipping incidents recorded by local authorities, but they exclude those incidents on private land. He makes an extremely good point, which has been raised by many other people. We are therefore exploring ways that we could plug that data gap by potentially using mobile digital apps to record information. That could be extremely useful.

Before I wrap up, I want to acknowledge the incredible pressure that local authorities have been under during the coronavirus lockdown. It has been mentioned by many people, but in all honesty, I and DEFRA have been working really hard with the waste industry to get those household waste and recycling centres open—which they have done pretty quickly, considering what had hit them. They shut down initially, but they are pretty much all up and running now. I pay tribute to the whole sector, which has worked so hard.

As you can tell, Madam Deputy Speaker, I fully sympathise with hon. Members on this issue. I recognise that there are a lot concerns. The case has been very well made. I hope it is clear that extensive action is under way to cut down on unacceptable waste. There is a lot in the waste and resources strategy and the Environment Bill, and the national fly-tipping prevention group is working on all these measures. I hope that that gives a bit of reassurance that we are trying to crack down on this problem. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough for bringing the issue to us today.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Thank you. What an informative debate.

Question put and agreed to.