Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Tim Loughton

Thursday 1st February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

4. When his Department plans to bring forward legislative proposals to ban the sale of horticultural peat.

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

This Government are absolutely clear about the need to end the use of peat products in horticulture in England. The use of peat has halved since we signalled that in 2020, and in August 2022 we announced that we would ban the sale of peat for use in amateur gardening. We remain committed to legislating for that when parliamentary time allows. In the meantime, we are continuing to work with the industry to explore ways to help it transition completely to peat-free working.

[Tim Loughton]

UK peatlands store over 3 billion tonnes of carbon, which is more than all the forests in the UK, France and Germany combined. The Government were right to bring in proposals for a ban, but that was back in 2022 and we have had no primary legislation yet. The Royal Horticultural Society, which is committed to being 100% peat-free, says that 40% of the industry is waiting for the legislation, so it can get on with a ban across the whole sector. The industry wants to do it, but it needs the legislation urgently.

[Rebecca Pow]

I too have met the RHS, and went to see its wonderful experiments on peat-free products very recently, some of which the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs put money into. This Government are committed to ending the use of peat in horticulture in England, and we will legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows. I can assure my hon. Friend that in the meantime we are working closely with those who want peat-free mediums, as well as the businesses supplying those growing mediums. A wide variety of work is going on, including research and experiments. As I have said, peat use has halved, and my hon. Friend might be interested to know that the Forestry Commission promises to go peat free—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Tim Loughton

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

Obviously, we are keen for tree planting to expand everywhere, including Scotland. Scotland already does a lot of tree planting, because the nature of its landscape is somewhat different from ours. We have a raft of measures, and our officials will be speaking to officials in Northern Ireland. It is very important that we keep all that contact and do this as a joint thing. Trees work on the atmosphere: they hold the carbon dioxide, and that goes everywhere, so we need to be doing this jointly.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

It is absolutely right that we vastly ramp up tree planting to help with carbon capture, but may I ask the Minister not to overlook kelp? It absorbs more than six times the amount of carbon as trees. We have vast tracts of seabed available, not least off Sussex. It helps with marine conservation, and it is also a food source. Please could we look at that more closely, and at how we can promote it, as we want to do, in Sussex?

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend raises an incredibly interesting point. It is something I am personally very interested in. As we speak, there is a project under way to plant kelp and to look at how its carbon capture is going. Mudflats are similarly really important, as are salt marshes. There could be a big future for this on our new horizon of dealing with the land and the landscape. All this carbon capture is a new feature in relation to climate change, and I think kelp will definitely be part of it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Tim Loughton

Thursday 31st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

5. What recent steps her Department has taken to improve air quality.

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

Our clean air strategy sets out an ambitious programme of action to reduce air pollutant emissions from a wide range of sources. The World Health Organisation has recognised the strategy as an example for the rest of the world to follow. We have also put in place a £3.5 billion plan to tackle roadside nitrogen dioxide concentrations, and our Environment Bill makes a clear commitment to set a legally binding target to reduce fine particulate matter.

[Tim Loughton]

May I echo the tributes being made to your chairmanship, Mr Speaker, although I did not get the memo about sending a bottle to your office as part of it?

I very much welcome the inclusion of air quality provisions in the Environment Bill. May I urge the Minister to look at some of the technological solutions, including one from a company in my constituency which is producing paints and coverings that neutralise nitrogen oxide emissions, not just absorb them? May I also ask her to look at the issue of air quality monitoring, because it turns out that several bits of air quality monitoring equipment in my constituency have not been working for some time? Although we have obligations on local authorities to reduce air pollution, we do not appear to have similar requirements on them to make sure they are monitoring it properly and accurately, and that needs to be looked at.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising these important points. Officials would be pleased to hear about any technologies, because the use of innovation and tech is absolutely the way we are going to solve lots of these problems. So I would be grateful if he would like to feed them in so that I can pass them on. Monitoring is also key, and it is all about science and data, which are very important. Our landmark Environment Bill requires us to set legally binding targets on this fine particulate matter, which is what authorities are mostly monitoring, as well as nitrogen dioxide, and to have separate long-term air quality targets to improve air quality nationwide. So we are moving in the right direction.

Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Tim Loughton

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 2nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

It is interesting. I recorded a television interview this morning with a couple who have been together for 26 years; they have teenage children and, for a variety of reasons, do not want to get married. They travelled to the Isle of Man, which is the only part of the British Isles that recognises civil partnerships for opposite-sex couples, and have become the first couple from mainland UK to have a civil partnership through the Isle of Man. Obviously, it is not recognised in the UK proper.

They made a very interesting point. They said, “We want to show our commitment in the eyes of the state. We want the stability and the protection, and the legal protections, that we just don’t have as a cohabiting couple, but marriage is not right for us. If we are going to be forced into a marriage as the only way of getting that legal protection, we would effectively be undermining marriage, because we would be doing it for the wrong reasons.” Civil partnership is a way to show that commitment and get the protections without having to conform in a way that they do not believe in.

Whether we agree with them, that is their right. Surely in an age when families take many different forms, the key thing that the state should be interested in is doing whatever creates stability and the best opportunities for loving couples to thrive and for children, when they are involved, to be brought up in a stable environment. This is surely another opportunity to get more people to be able to take advantage of such a situation.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will—in for a penny, in for a pound.

[Rebecca Pow]

The consultation did not have any consensus that we should go down the civil partnership line, but will my hon. Friend comment on the fact that in France, religious marriages are not recognised and have to be preceded by a civil ceremony? I wonder whether any data have been gathered about how many split-up families they have there, or whether they have a better record than we are likely to have, because this is really all about family stability.

[Tim Loughton]

I have precisely the statistics that my hon. Friend is looking for. If she is patient for a few minutes longer, I will give her exactly that information.

Such people are mostly in committed loving relationships, but if they do not want to go for a traditional marriage, they have no way of having that recognised in the eyes of the state. That brings me on to the third main rationale for this reform—I promise that I will then come to my hon. Friend’s point. Particularly worrying is the common misconception that there is such a thing as a common-law wife or husband, as a woman typically finds out abruptly on the death of the partner when there is an inheritance tax bill on the estate and potentially on the family home. If a woman has a child with her partner and the relationship breaks down, she is not entitled to any form of financial support if they are not married. There is no automatic entitlement to property, even if she had been paying into the mortgage.

When one partner is much older than the other and there is a reasonable expectation that one will die some years before the other, the long-term survivor would not receive the same tax benefits as a married woman or those in a civil partnership. That would be discriminatory towards the couples’ children. The same vulnerabilities can apply if one partner does a runner. Even a couple engaged to be married have more rights than a cohabiting opposite-sex couple.

Civil Partnership Act 2004 (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Tim Loughton

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 13th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

This is about the future maintenance of children. It is about an inheritance tax bill that happens all of a sudden that could lead to the sale of a property so that someone finds themselves, in effect, homeless. These are all potential dangers currently faced by people who are not in a formal, legally recognised relationship.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very sound case. I was fascinated to hear the current statistics on cohabiting. If we are to build a balanced society, bringing up our children in a fair and good way, surely it is very important to bring forward the ideas encompassed in this Bill in order to help society as a whole.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend pre-empts a large plank of my speech. Rather than let everybody pre-run what I want to say, I think I shall get on with saying it. Perhaps I will take some contributions at a later stage.

Returning to the problem that I have identified, when one partner is much older than the other and there is a reasonable expectation that they will die some years before the other, the long-term survivor would not receive the same tax benefits as a married person or someone in a civil partnership, which is also discriminatory towards the couple’s children. Even a couple who are engaged to be married have more rights than a cohabiting couple. Offering a formalised role within an opposite-sex civil partnership could save a lot of retrospective ignorance and the ensuing heartache and financial implications.

It is for those reasons of natural justice and protecting the rights of partners that I am yet again promoting a private Member’s Bill to extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, which I have been trying to do since the change to the legislation back in 2013. There is a deal of déjà vu involved in my reappearance on the same subject here today.

Without Government support, the Bill is unlikely to make headway, despite the support of hon. Members from all parts of the House and a nationwide campaign that has so far attracted more than 71,000 signatures to a petition. I am particularly pleased that we have the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady), who is the chairman of the 1922 Committee, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). We have the support of hon. Members from just about every party represented in this House. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), who speaks for the official Opposition on equality matters, wrote on her blog:

“we have the chance to take another step in extending true equality, admittedly only in one aspect of our lives; choosing the type of partnership that best suits our needs, faith and aspirations.”

She gave her support and that of her party to the Bill, and is sorry she could not be here to give it in person.