Environment Bill

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard]

My hon. Friend raises an incredibly good point. People want to see action. This is not something that concerns only politicos; the public want to see proper action as well. We need to put pressure on the Minister to do the right thing, and I am afraid that more pressure will be put on her on a cross-party basis. What she has announced is a step in the right direction, but it does not reach a compromise that is acceptable. We also need to put pressure on the water companies. Water companies such as Southern Water have presided over huge amounts of discharge into our natural environment, but it is not just those companies. Southern has had an enormous focus as a result of its huge fine for deliberately venting sewage into the sea, but we need every single water company to step up. To achieve that, we need pressure from the companies’ shareholders to do so and also pressure from Ofwat.

Ofwat needs to prioritise action to deal with raw sewage outflows into our rivers much more in the business plans. If it is not incentivised or required to do that, it will not do it. That is the power the Secretary of State and the Minister have over water companies under this privatised system. They have the power, but they are choosing not to use it to put in the investment that we need. That is why we need to see further improvement on this amendment, and I suspect that there will be further improvement on it, but I would also encourage the Minister to find a good answer to the question that was posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi):

“When will all English rivers be sewage free?”

That seems a simple question, and our constituents want to know the answer. If she cannot provide the answer, we must recognise that there is a bigger problem here that we need to look at.

Turning to habitats, I am proud that the British people have an ambition to protect the environment. All of us are here reflecting the views of our constituents who want to see more action to protect the environment. Not everyone knows how much carbon is emitted from their community on a daily basis, but we all recognise how many trees there are and the volume of the birdsong chorus in our communities. Nature matters. Dr Andy Purvis from the Natural History Museum has said that the UK has

“led the world in degrading the natural environment.”

We only have half our biodiversity left as a nation; we have lost an awful lot of species and habitats and we cannot risk losing any more.

The habitats regulations, which are the first line of defence in providing strict protections for the UK’s finest wildlife sites and endangered species, are so important, yet clauses 113 and 114 essentially give the Secretary of State the freedom to do what he likes with those regulations. He is required only to “have regard” to the need to enhance biodiversity when making changes, but “having regard” is not sufficient when we are in a climate and ecological emergency. That is why we are seeking to protect Lords amendment 65, which would ensure that powers to amend these regulations did not weaken their important environmental protections and could be used only for environmental improvement. I struggle to understand why anyone would not agree with the case that the Lords have made on that.

The public want to see us protect our forests and woodlands, and they want to see us plant more trees. The Climate Change Committee, the independent body set up to advise the Government, has been clear that we need to raise our current 13% forest cover to 17% by 2050 if we are to have any chance of meeting our climate goals, but we know that the Government’s slow, pedestrian and managerial approach to tree planting means the target will not be met until 2091. Their action does not match their soundbites, as it must if we are to hit our climate goals.

Planting more trees in England is strongly supported by the public, by business, by local councils and, looking at their press releases, by Ministers as well, so why are Ministers failing to plant sufficient trees? It is not because they do not enjoy enough support, it is not because the public will not support further measures and it is not because the public will not support further spending on this, so what are the obstacles and inhibitors that stop Ministers from delivering more trees? We need to see further action on tree planting by mobilising more of the power of the state to get this done.

On an issue where there is cross-party and full public support, we need Ministers to do better than they are at the moment. England is being left behind in the UK’s family of nations when it comes to tree planting, and we are being left behind on the global stage, too. If Ethiopia can plant 5 billion trees a year, including planting 350 million trees in a single day on 29 July 2019, why can we not have similar ambitions and scale of delivery?

Although we should be planting more trees, we must also be careful of losing trees, which is why Labour supports Lords amendments 94, 95 and 66. We know that deforestation, legal and illegal, is increasing alarmingly across the planet, but we also know that, far too often, we measure the impacts only within our own nation. Our global consumption and global supply chains must be taken into account if we are to prevent deforestation. Allowing illegal deforestation to become legal deforestation is a “get out of jail free” card that does nothing to get our planet out of trouble, so we need to see further advances. I am glad the Minister is making progress on certain commodities that come from stressed areas, but I encourage her to go further and do more.

Briefly, could the Minister ask the Financial Conduct Authority to issue new guidelines to financial institutions on deforestation risk? No British bank should be bankrolling deforestation internationally.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

I have a simple question for my hon. Friend, following on from what my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said. How do we differentiate between illegal logging and legal logging? There is no such mechanism known to humankind, so it is a farce, frankly, to say that we will ban illegal logging and allow legal logging in the Amazon rainforest.

[Luke Pollard]

My hon. Friend raises a good point, and it is why we need firm action not only from the Government but from the supply chain. We also need enforcement of our high standards, which must not be undercut in any trade deals. Food and produce produced to lower standards abroad must not undercut domestic industries or our environmental and animal welfare standards.

I thank Labour peers, Cross Benchers and peers from other parties for their work on this Bill. Until the votes earlier, the Bill was in a much better place than it was at the start. I deeply regret that the Government are whipping their MPs to remove many of those improvements, and I hope Conservative Members will consider what further pressure can be put on Ministers to improve the Bill.

On the important issue of river sewage, I want to work on a cross-party basis with Ministers to find a better compromise. I do not think what we have just heard will convince Opposition Members or Conservative Back Benchers, but there is a route through this, and that is firmer action and a clear timeline as to how we will address this problem.

--- Later in debate ---

I know that many hon. Members want to speak, so I will end by thanking the Department for this truly groundbreaking legislation. There is no such piece of legislation anywhere else in the world and we should rightly be proud of that. I hope that this is a starting point and that we can go further to ensure that we get everything that we want from the water companies.

[Tony Lloyd]

Lords amendment 43 addresses a real and important issue. Although I listened carefully to what the Minister said to the House, it simply did not go far enough. We know that the decline in the population of pollinators has been serious. For example, it is estimated that we lose some £500 million-worth of Gala apples every year. If we add up the other fruits and vegetables that rely on pollinators, the economic cost is enormous. But this is more important than simply the economics of the agricultural industry, although that is important.

The decline in pollinators is also about habitat loss, as the Minister said, but the Government are not yet doing enough to restore those habitats. We also know that the impact of pesticides is real. The Minister said that the Government follow the science, but we do not have the science on this. We do not know about the impact, for example, of the joint use of products such as fungicides and pyrethroids. We know a little bit about the impact of neonicotinoids on the honey bee, but we do not know about the impact of neonicotinoids on other pollinators. We simply cannot follow the science if that science does not exist.

When we were leaving the European Union, one of the Government’s commitments was that we would maintain the ban on neonicotinoids because of the known impact. They do not simply kill honey bees directly; they also prevent the reproduction of honey bees and possibly of other pollinators, and make the nervous system of the honey bee no longer functional so that solitary bees, for example, which are also important pollinators, may simply not return home to feed their brood. We do not really know the impact of neonicotinoids, except that it is bad.

The right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) made an important point earlier, when he said that Ministers come and Ministers go. I say to the Minister that an important lesson in life is this: never trust Ministers to make decisions unless we have transparency. We can respect individual Ministers, but we need a consistency of approach that outlasts individual Ministers. On the question of the protection of pollinators, it is important that we have transparency and the capacity genuinely to follow expert science—to build that scientific base, but with expert science.

Earlier this year, we saw that the Secretary of State was prepared to use the exemptions from the neonicotinoid ban to allow the use of neonicotinoids with respect to the sugar beet crop, because there was enormous pressure from the sugar industry and, to a degree, from some sugar beet farmers. In fact, the Government did not follow the science then, because the experts advised the Government that that was the wrong decision, but Government Ministers still made that decision. They were wrong; the experts were right. The funny thing is that a good number of farmers who have been made aware of that feel that they were hoodwinked by the Government. Some have said that they would not use neonicotinoids next year on the basis of what happened this year. That is important, because the reason we need Lords amendment 43 is that it allows us to move on to the basis of genuinely following the science, genuinely protecting the farming industry where that is appropriate, and absolutely guaranteeing that we protect pollinators—not just honeybees but across the piece—from the impact of pesticides and the damage they can do.

I implore Members to think very seriously about this. It should not be a partisan, party issue; it goes way beyond that. If you believe in the value of pollinators, and quite frankly our agricultural system would be destroyed without them, then please—

[Matt Rodda]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech about the importance of pollinators—not just honeybees, although they are hugely important—and the economic and environmental benefits of these very valuable insects. Does he agree that it would have been better for the former Minister to have listened to a broader range of advice about neonicotinoids? Does he also agree that it would have been wiser for the Government to continue to follow the regulation from the European Union and not to try to diverge from that in this important area, and indeed others?

[Tony Lloyd]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I hope that the Minister does listen. Although the Government recognised that there was no need to use the exemption this year because of the weather conditions, that may not apply next year or the year after, so we need to follow the experts in a way that they most certainly were not followed by the Government.

Amendment 43 is not partisan; it is in the interests of everybody. I hope the whole House will seriously think about supporting its retention.

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

There is a lot covered in this group of amendments, but in the interests of time I will limit my remarks to the three Ps of pollinators, pesticides and poo. We are beekeepers at home. As I speak, my husband is processing the honey from our seven hives in our kitchen. For reasons I have never fully understood, this seems to involve coating every single implement in said kitchen in honey, so I am quite resigned to going back on Friday evening to a kitchen that resembles the aftermath of a house party thrown by Winnie the Pooh. Wish me luck.

Starting with pollinators and pesticides, the UK already has legislation that regulates pesticides that was transferred from the EU. It takes a tougher, hazard-based approach to regulation rather than the risk-based approach that many other countries use. The Bill requires that pesticides have no unacceptable effects on the environment, having particular regard to its impact on non-target species, which of course includes all pollinators, not just bees. Amendment 43 would replicate part of this existing framework, which sounds to me like a recipe for confusion. It also seems to be jumping the gun on the new national action plan for sustainable use of pesticides, which I look forward to seeing before the end of this year.

So, on to poo. Storm overflows designed for emergencies are now being used as a daily method of sewage management. In Rushcliffe in 2020, Severn Trent recorded storm overflows at three points in the village of Radcliffe-on-Trent alone, totalling 6,854 hours, while in the village of East Leake, the sewage treatment works there discharged 58 times for a total of 715 hours. Yet Severn Trent has still not acknowledged the need for a new pumping station. I welcome the measures in the Bill that will require water companies to publish data on storm overflows both on an annual basis and in real time, especially because it took my team months to extract the data that we needed from Severn Trent.

The Bill also puts a duty on water companies to produce comprehensive statutory drainage and sewerage management plans, including how storm overflows will be addressed. Those plans will cover a minimum 25-year horizon, which is crucial, because much of the problem in Rushcliffe comes from investment in drainage and sewerage not keeping pace with development and new homes.

The Bill also puts a duty on Government to produce a statutory plan to reduce discharges from storm overflows next year. I believe that is the right approach, because it acknowledges two things. First, it acknowledges that reducing storm overflows is the responsibility of a wider range of actors than just water companies. As the Rivers Trust has said, delivering a plan will require contributions from the whole of society, and in particular landowners, developers, highway constructors and homeowners, to divert surface water away from sewers. I am concerned that proposed new section 141A of amendment 45 covers only sewerage undertakers, leaving other significant stakeholders off the hook. We need a comprehensive strategy that addresses the problem from all angles.

Secondly, as implied by the first point, and as has been discussed today, this is going to cost a lot of money. Initial estimates, as the Minister said, range between £150 billion and £650 billion, and it will probably require some fundamental changes to how we do things. Neither of those is reason not to tackle the problem. I firmly believe we should do so, and the Bill makes a first, important step towards doing that, but we need to ensure that we understand the costs, the likely customer bill increases and the trade-offs against other areas that we want to see water companies investing in. While I support the aims of the amendment, and I acknowledge and thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) for all his work in this area and in strengthening the Bill to date, I will not be voting for the amendment tonight. We need to go further, but we need to make sure that is based on data.

The final thought I offer is that although debates such as this naturally focus on what is not in the Bill, I join my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) in recognising all the great things that are in the Bill and the huge, fantastic job that the Minister has done, including on strengthening protection for ancient woodlands, the conservation covenants, the scrutiny of forest risk products in the supply chain and a legally binding target to halt species decline by 2030. That is just in the part of the Bill we are discussing now, and I think those things are worth celebrating.