Nightclub Safety

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Geraint Davies

Monday 8th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Geraint Davies]

rose—

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

rose—

Environment Bill

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Geraint Davies

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies [V]]

Thank you so much, Madam Deputy Speaker.

New clause 6 is a necessary condition of delivering World Health Organisation air quality limits, or indeed any targets that the Government choose to set by 2022, as they plan. DEFRA alone simply cannot deliver the clean air targets that the Government want without the support of all other Departments. The new clause would create a duty for all Departments to work together to do that.

When I met the Environment Secretary, the Environment Minister and Rosamund, Ella’s mother, the Environment Secretary said that he had not ruled out WHO air quality limits and needed to understand how he would get to any such targets. I agree with that, but it requires a duty on all Government bodies and Departments to work together. DEFRA would work with Transport when Transport needs to deliver an integrated, electrified public transport system. Clearly, we would need a Treasury fiscal statutory mechanism to facilitate that with the right duties, incentives, scrappage schemes and investment. We would need a housing and planning scheme built into that so that we build around stations, not motorways. We would need Health at the centre of it, because 64,000 people a year are dying prematurely. We need an education system that allows people to walk to school safely, and a local government system so that people can take account of things and possibly reduce the speed of motorway traffic near urban centres. This all needs to be by joined-up design, rather than hope for the best.

The second part of the amendment is about indoor air quality. I thank the Government for belatedly including indoor air quality in the Bill. I thank the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health for their “Inside Story” report, which acknowledged that 90% of the time we are indoors we are subjected to all sorts of dangerous chemicals—formaldehyde and all sorts of other things—in our furniture. Professor Stephen Holgate, one of the architects of the report, mentioned that we will not get limits unless we have an interdisciplinary approach with academics, clinicians, industry and government working together. Indeed, the professor of environmental law at University College London, Eloise Scotford, mentioned that joined-up governance is critical in law to push ahead with progress.

As we approach COP26, we have an opportunity to present a template of an integrated approach to help combat air pollution, which is killing 7 million people across the globe every year. I give my thanks to the Health Secretary and other members of the Government who are working together, but the point of the amendment is to provide a duty, so that we are required to work together to deliver cleaner air and save thousands of lives.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD) [V]]

We Liberal Democrats have a clear plan to cut most carbon emissions by 2030 and to get to net zero by 2045. In the context of the Bill, waste is a big carbon emitter, particularly plastic waste, and we must address the problem immediately. The Waste and Resources Action Programme’s new Plastic Pact, funded by DEFRA, is an important initiative which will create a circular economy for plastics. It is based on building a stronger recycling system, taking more responsibility for our own waste and ensuring that plastic packaging can be effectively recycled and re-used.

Last year, I tabled an amendment to the Bill. It would have perfectly fitted WRAP’s initiative, but sadly it is not in the Bill. My amendment aimed to make the reporting of the end destination of household and business waste mandatory for councils. Transparency is a great driver of change and one of the sad features of the Bill is the absence of transparency and accountability. No targets set within the Bill will be legally binding until 2037. By then, the climate crisis will be massively worse. Acting now is imperative. Climate change delay is hardly better than climate change denial.

We are proud in Bath to be one of the first councils to introduce a clean air zone. Air pollution is a big killer and hits the disadvantaged much harder due to poor housing, high-density living, proximity to main roads and fewer options to avoid higher-risk areas. What my council now needs is a separate clean air Act, which also includes new powers and funding to local authorities to effectively monitor air pollution. For instance, in Bath, residents are asking for real-time data to be made available, so that residents can make informed choices for their city and on what forms of transport they want to use.

I am ambitious for my city and for my country to show clear leadership on clean, healthy urban environments for the future. There is so much we can achieve with the right political will.

Permitted Development and Shale Gas Exploration

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Geraint Davies

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Lady is probably aware that satellite data over the United States shows that 5% of the methane from fracking is leaked through fugitive emissions. Given that methane is 85 times more powerful than CO₂ for global warming, that makes fracking nearly twice as bad as coal for global warming. Does she therefore agree that under no condition should we go ahead with fracking?

[Wera Hobhouse]

I certainly agree that we do not really have comparative data. Fracking is hailed as this new thing that would reduce global warming, but it absolutely does not.

Giving permitted development rights to shale gas exploration would mean local communities being removed from the decision-making process. That is one of my biggest concerns. This issue was picked up by the report of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, which concludes:

“Shale gas development of any type should not be classed as a permitted development. Given the contentious nature of fracking, local communities should be able to have a say in whether this type of development takes place, particularly as concerns about the construction, locations and cumulative impact of drill pads are yet to be assuaged by the Government”.

Brexit Deal: Referendum

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Geraint Davies

Monday 11th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Geraint Davies]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her marriage.

Strangely enough, just before the Brexit vote I turned to the present Foreign Secretary and said, “Boris,”—this is what I say to taxi drivers, by the way—“can you name one law in the EU that you do not like?” I thought he would know because he was leading the campaign. He scratched his head and said, “There are three directives on bananas.” This is a true story. I said, “Well, the thing is, you can buy bananas in Tesco and the Co-op. There isn’t really a problem with bananas. Can you think of something else?” He scratched his head a bit longer and said, “REACH.” He was hoping I did not know anything about the regulation for registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals. I said, “Do you mean the regulation that ensures that manufacturers are required to prove that a chemical is safe before it is marketed, as opposed to the American system where they can sell what they like and the United States Environmental Protection Agency must prove that it is hazardous before banning it, which is why asbestos is still legally sold in America?” I said, “Given that, don’t you think the precautionary principle that we use, through REACH, is the right one?” He said, “Oh, I think John, over there, has got to talk to me,” and walked off.

Similarly, when I spoke to the present Environment Secretary I said, “Mr Gove—Govey—can you think of an EU law that you don’t agree with? You are leading this campaign with Boris,” and he scratched his head awhile and said, “I don’t know: the clinical trials directive.” Again, he thought he could throw these things in, hoping that I did not know anything about them. I said, “The clinical trials directive requires that pharmaceutical companies and drug companies publish their tests and trials before marketing a product, as opposed to what happens in America, where they could have a number of trials and choose to just publish the positive outcomes of those trials and not the negative ones. So if someone is making thalidomide or something similar they could say, ‘Look, we have had these five trials and there is nothing wrong with it.’ So what is wrong with that, Michael?” He said, “I have got to go and talk to Freda” —or whoever it was—and went off.

The question that was asked was whether I would be comfortable with more laws passed in Europe, and the answer is yes. Do I want deeper, closer and greater political union? No. Obviously the people of France and Germany, where there have been elections recently, have shown that they want maximised devolution and sovereignty within a partnership that collectively works for the good of all. That is the essence of the EU, not some sort of monolithic, bureaucratic, centralised system that generates laws that people do not like—and some of the architects of the disaster that is going on cannot even think of any such laws.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

I apologise for being late, Sir David. I was listening to the Prime Minister’s statement. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is tragic that discussions that bring out what the EU is like—how we trade, what our relationship is, what our consumer protections are, and the environmental protection —are happening now, 18 months after the referendum? Would not it have been much better to have them before the referendum? Given that we did not have a proper debate, is not now—or the next six months to a year—the time to have a proper referendum on the deal, because that is when we have all the information?

[Geraint Davies]

That is precisely the point. We all bear our own responsibility for not talking about Europe enough in the past. Everyone said, “We don’t want to talk about that; it is really boring.” The Labour party has some responsibility for that. In the approach to the 2014 European election the Labour party campaign was about the cost of living crisis—to send a message to the Conservatives that it was terrible. Next to that was a leaflet from the UK Independence party saying, in various ways, “Europe’s rubbish.” If you are a normal person—I appreciate you are not, Sir David. [Laughter.] You are super-normal. If people get literature saying, “Europe’s rubbish,” and then something saying, “Send a message to the Conservatives about the cost of living crisis,” will they be bothered to vote?

I put out some literature saying that 25,000 jobs in Swansea bay depend on being part of the European Union, that people should vote Labour for the European Union—to keep that going—and that they should remember that their four weeks of paid holiday and the quality of the air they breathe and the water they bathe in rely on protection and guarantees from the EU, which is therefore a good idea. My vote went up in that election, comparing like with like and contiguous seats, with a big turnout and a big Labour vote. I think that was simply because we respected the fact that the election was about Europe, and we talked positively about Europe, as opposed to anything else.

The point that I am trying to make is that although the arch-fundamentalist Eurosceptic ideologues who seem to have hijacked the Conservative party, plus their UKIP bedfellows, keep going on in a monotonous, manic way about how awful Europe is, now that they are taking over, those of us who realise the benefits of Europe remain quiet. Worse still, Europe has been regarded as an embarrassing relative locked in the top cupboard of the house.

It is belatedly time, now that there has been a vote in principle to leave, because everyone was a bit worried about it—they do not know why, when asked—to talk about the issue and say, “Did you know that, if we go, it will be more difficult and expensive to go on holiday; we will lose all these jobs and our universities will not have such collaboration; we will no longer have the weight of the EU in negotiating trade deals but will be on our own, and the people we are negotiating with will know that and exploit it, and we will therefore be subjected to a battering of our rights and privileges; and business will say that we face tariffs and therefore cannot afford four weeks of paid holiday and all the red tape and health and safety?”

Now that people realise that will happen, they are saying, “Hold on. I thought that what was happening was that there were all these foreign people over here taking our jobs and services. I didn’t know they were contributing, net, to the Exchequer and helping me. I was led to believe something quite different. I didn’t know I would lose my job and there would be inflation. Now that I see that what is under the headline of ‘Brexit breakfast’ is something appalling, rather than what was on the menu, I should have the right to send it back, because it does not represent what I was offered.” In a nutshell, people are telling me, “This isn’t what I voted for, and I want to have the final say.”

Regarding those comments about the political parties, there has not been much political leadership toward giving people the final say on the exit package, but people are asking for it of their own volition. The news is very biased; I am not talking about the BBC here, but some of the gutter press have an almost manic obsession with saying, “We’ve got to get out at any cost; it doesn’t matter.” They have an obsession with leaving Europe, perhaps because Europe has the collective will to bring in regulations that bring people’s taxation to account and ensure that we live in a civilised world that is not becoming increasingly polarised. The people, as the recent Survation poll shows, are now saying, “Yes, we want to have a final say on the exit package. We voted in good faith, but this is not what we voted for.”

I believe that this is a one-way road, not a flip-flopping of British opinion. Every day, people are saying, “This isn’t what we voted for.” They are suddenly coming to that realisation. The important thing is that nobody blames the people for voting in good faith for what they believed to be the case, because they were told that it was true, but it has emerged that it was not true. As Keynes famously said:

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?”

The answer, from a lot of Conservatives in particular, is, “Well, I just continue as if I didn’t know.” We can say, “Oh no. If you keep walking down this road you will go off a precipice.” They say, “Well, I’ve decided to walk down it anyway.” That is where we are headed.