Environment Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Saqib Bhatti and Abena Oppong-Asare

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th March 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden) (Con)]

Q You spoke about the Bill being ambitious, and legislation such as this should be ambitious. You talked about opportunities. Local councils up and down the country are doing things to be environmentally friendly. How does the Bill enhance the current activity? Are you looking at things such as procurement to assist in that?

Mayor Glanville: It can provide an excellent framework, especially on the waste and resources piece, introducing more of those principles around producer- paying deposit and reuse schemes. Setting out a clear regulatory framework for that backs up the work that local government is already doing. As I have answered in response to other questions, we cannot just look at the waste and recycling end. We need national Government to make a clearer ask of industry.

Industry also welcomes having frameworks that we can all work to. I do not think it wants to put labels on consumer products that suggest that local recycling streams can accommodate that recycling and then find out that they cannot. That confusion is something that both local and national Government want to see resolved. As long as the balance between rights and responsibilities between local and national Government are right, something like the work on biodiversity can be a real improvement to the planning system. It has to be done in the right way and work with local government and residents’ expectations of local government. While we as a sector are representing ourselves, it is often the through the expectations of our residents that we will have some control and influence around implementing these policies. If the legislation is not drafted in the right way, we will not have that and people will say: “Why, if it is supposed to be improving local biodiversity, is it not contributing to it?”.

In the areas around tree management, we want to be clear about the role of, say, the Forestry Commission and what new statutory powers it is going to have and does it interact properly with the local planning and regulatory system?

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

Q Clauses 95 to 98 seek to create local nature recovery strategies across England. How will that help local authorities provide a more effective and joined-up nationwide strategy for nature recovery? We heard evidence earlier from Veolia, which has a number of refuse and recycling centres in your patch.

Mayor Glanville: Can I clarify what Veolia said?

--- Later in debate ---

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

Q Currently, the Bill is not explicit enough about irreplaceable habitats. There is some concern about unique habitats, which can be paved over, as long as developers can show net gain overall. How well founded are those concerns?

Rico Wojtulewicz: As far as I understand it, protected habitats will remain protected. The work we have done with Natural England identifies that. They have been very keen for us to ensure that that occurs. Small developers will typically be the ones who are delivering on those sites more often than the larger house builders, because they might lose one particular site within a larger site. A lot of the larger developers specifically will be delivering on agricultural land. It is on those smaller plots of land that there perhaps may be more danger of those protected wildlife sites being lost. We think that Natural England will put the right protections in place so that it cannot just be offset.

[Saqib Bhatti]

Q Following on from the Minister’s question, I would like a bit more clarity. I understand that the biodiversity net gain concept is being embraced, and you welcome that. It is a minimum of 10%, so there is potential, if a developer wants to go higher than 10%, that they can do that. As a federation, you are not against that; you are embracing that. Am I clear about that?

Rico Wojtulewicz: Yes, absolutely. If we can go higher, we will. Help us to get there.