Category: Environment

  • George Eustice – 2022 Statement on the Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan

    George Eustice – 2022 Statement on the Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan

    The statement made by George Eustice, the then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the House of Commons on 5 September 2022.

    This Government have consistently been clear that the failure of the water companies to adequately reduce the amount of storm sewage discharges is unacceptable. We are the first Government to set a clear requirement on water companies to reduce sewage discharges and set this in law.

    Today, I have laid in Parliament the storm overflows discharge reduction plan, which sets out strict new targets to crack down on sewage discharges. This will start the largest investment in infrastructure ever undertaken by the water industry, an estimated £56 billion of capital investment over the next 25 years. This will eliminate 80% of discharges by 2050.

    Designated bathing waters will be the first sites to see change. By 2035, water companies must ensure that overflows affecting a designated bathing water are compliant with strict standards to protect public health. We will also see significant reductions in discharges at 75% of high priority nature sites. By 2050, no storm overflow covered in the plan will be permitted to operate where this will cause any adverse ecological harm.

    The first steps in achieving these targets are already being taken. Water companies are investing £3.1 billion already between 2020 and 2025 to deliver 800 improvements to storm overflows, which will deliver an average of a 25% reduction in discharges by 2025.

    Storm overflows are a Victorian sewer system design feature. Achieving the targets will require large and complex infrastructure projects which will take time to deliver. It is right that we carefully balance our ambitions to improve and protect the environment with the need to limit the impact on consumers, particularly when households are facing pressures. If new evidence shows it is possible to go faster, without disproportionately affecting consumers, we will not hesitate to do so and we have set a review of the targets in 2027 for this purpose.

    We will not hesitate to hold companies to account where discharges are happening illegally. This is happening now, with record fines and the largest ever criminal and civil investigation into water company sewage discharges being launched by Ofwat and the Environment Agency.

    We have also made clear that water companies must be transparent about how executive pay and shareholder dividends align with the services they provide their customers. This Government supports Ofwat’s recent proposals to take further enforcement action against companies that do not link dividend payments to their environmental performance, or those failing to be transparent about their dividend pay-outs.

    Water is one of our most precious commodities—water companies must now show their commitment to clean up our environment, protect public health and bring these harmful discharges to an end.

  • Alok Sharma – 2022 Speech at the Africa Adaptation Summit Opening Ceremony

    Alok Sharma – 2022 Speech at the Africa Adaptation Summit Opening Ceremony

    The speech made by Alok Sharma, the Cabinet Office, in Rotterdam in Netherlands, on 5 September 2022.

    Patrick, thank you very much.

    Presidents, your excellencies, sisters and brothers, if I may: I want to thank everyone for all the inspiring words we’ve heard, and indeed the pragmatic suggestions, as that’s what actually matters, Patrick, as you’ve said.

    And I want to thank you, Patrick, you and your team at the Global Centre on Adaptation for putting this together, together with the African Union, with Akin and the African Development Bank.

    This is a critical summit. I want to start by saying that, unlike Kristalina, I have no original jokes to offer. But I’ve noted the joke you made, and I’ll be using it – like a good politician, I’ll be repeating it and claiming it as my own at future events!

    Friends, we are ten months since COP26. And, as I think we’ve heard, that was an important milestone on adaptation and the work that we do around this.

    We have the Glasgow/Sharm-El-Sheik Work Programme, which has got going on the global goal on Adaptation.

    And in Glasgow we also had the event – that I was very pleased to be part of – on launching the African Adaptation Acceleration Program. And Akin, you talked about the £20 million of UK funding for the program.

    This is all about making sure that we are driving policy and project support to those working to design and implement transformational adaptation interventions.

    And so whether that’s in agriculture or infrastructure, or innovative finance, as Ngozi said (and others have commented): at the end of the day, we have to see tackling climate change also as a growth opportunity. For jobs, for the economy.

    And I think unless we encourage everyone to do that, we will not make the progress that we need to make.

    Ban and other leaders have referenced the commitment that we got at COP of developed countries at least doubling their collective provision on adaptation finance for developing nations by 2025.

    I can tell you that this wasn’t an easy process, but we got there. And the reality now is that countries have to deliver.

    You will all have seen the OECD figures that have come out for 2020 on the $100bn goal. We are moving in the right direction when it comes to adaptation, but the reality is we are going to have to quicken that pace.

    Patrick, you said not to talk about all the things that have been going wrong in the world when it comes to climate, so let me just say this: the one thing I think every single one of us can say, just looking in our own countries, our continents, is that the chronic threat of climate change has got worse since COP26.

    Things aren’t getting better.

    I could give you all the examples of Africa, which I’ve got here, but I’m not going to because you know all of this.

    I can tell you from a UK point of view, for the first time, we had wildfires this summer; we have droughts being declared; we have climate emergencies in terms of temperature levels being declared this summer.

    Climate change does not recognise borders. And I think the sooner every world leader recognises that, the better.

    We’ve got sixty-two days to COP27. Patrick, you said we want to see what is actually going to happen.

    One of the things that we did agree was that there would be a progress report on the $100bn delivery plan, that is being worked on by our friends in the Canadian and German governments.

    We will publish that before COP27, so we will be able to see what progress is actually being made.

    And of course, this is going to require all the providers – the MDBs and others – to set out clear, ambitious adaptation finance targets when we meet in Egypt.

    And I also want to acknowledge the brilliant work that Kristalina and her team have done on the RSD; that is really quite remarkable, so thank you so much for all your leadership on that.

    We know that the annual adaptation costs are expected to reach at least $140bn a year by 2030, and frankly public finance is not going to be enough. We are going to need private finance. And so in a way I agree; I wish we did have more of the private finance providers around this table.

    You’ve all set out very clearly the challenges we have and how we rise to those. And I want to acknowledge, firstly, the enormous support and help that I’ve got from Amina over the past years in this role; but also to make the point that, as she said, we need to make sure that when we get to COP27, we have to demonstrate that what we achieved at COP26 is starting to be delivered.

    I said in Glasgow that the pulse of 1.5 is weak. And I have to say to you friends, it does remain weak right now.

    On the positive side, we were able to show in Glasgow that the multilateral system, however unwieldy, can work when we all understand that it’s in our collective self interest.

    And so what we do need to ensure in the coming days, weeks, and two months to COP27, is that we’re delivering on adaptation.

    I want to end by what Akin said. He said: ‘you’re all doers in this room’.

    So I have to say friends, now we just need to get it done.

    Thank you.

  • Peter Ainsworth – 2002 Speech on the Environment, Challenge and Opportunity

    Peter Ainsworth – 2002 Speech on the Environment, Challenge and Opportunity

    The speech made by Peter Ainsworth on 21 March 2002.

    Given that the environment is where we all live, I’ve never understood why, historically, it has come so low down the pecking order of political priorities.

    For years it was regarded as the unique preserve of cranks, new agers and people with strange beards. The caricature, usually unfair, of the tree hugging weirdo was easy to dismiss.

    But should we have so lightly dismissed the work and warnings of poets and writers who, from the outset of the Industrial Revolution that built and sustained cities like Sheffield, began to show an acute regard for the relationship between man and nature?

    The sense that something quite serious was going wrong runs like a thread through literature, from Wordsworth to TS Eliot, from Blake to Betjeman and Philip Larkin.

    They worked from instinct, but 200 years after the start of the Industrial Revolution, science has begun to catch up with instinct and we know we have a problem.

    It was in fact Margaret Thatcher who changed the whole nature of the debate about the environment. In a speech to the Royal Society in 1988, she took many by surprise in launching a series of new initiatives to protect the local and global environment, observing that “we have no freehold on this earth, only a full repairing lease”.

    Politicians who dismiss the environment should remember that parliamentary seats can be won or lost on issues like incinerators, landfill sites, housing schemes, quarrying proposals, and flood defences.

    So let’s put paid, once and for all, to the notion that the environment is not politically important.

    We live in a time when the world has never been more connected. The internet, satellite television, mobile phones, email can put us in touch with almost anyone from almost anywhere at the press of a few buttons. These connections mean that this world has become, for mankind, a smaller place. What happened in New York on September 11th had an impact on communities as far afield as Sheffield and Sydney.

    Yet there is a big paradox, in this age of connectedness, people feel that they have never been less connected with each other where it really counts; at home or in the communities where they live and work. Indeed, the very word ‘Community’ is in danger of becoming a meaningless piece of political jargon in a country where most people live in cities and don’t even know who their neighbours are, let alone share with them a developed commitment to work together and share their ideas and experiences.

    So the age of connectedness is also an age of palpable alienation for many people. A time in which, perhaps not surprisingly, casual and violent crime is on the increase.

    What has any of this got to do with the environment?

    Well, as I have said, the environment is where we live, it is quite literally everywhere; it is the context in which we lead our lives. If we degrade the environment we degrade ourselves. Conversely, a society that invests in its environment is not only placing a proper emphasis on the quality of the lives of its citizens, but also recognising its obligations to future generations. In so doing it helps to create a more stable society and, internationally, a more secure world.

    Those of us who care about the state of society are concerned by the indifference shown by large numbers of people, especially younger people, to politicians in particular and politics in general. The fact that more 18-25 years olds voted for Will or Gareth in Pop Idol than voted for Will or Tony in the General Election tells its own story.

    One of the reasons for the profound and, ultimately, worrying disconnection between politicians and voters is that politicians have utterly failed to keep up with the changed nature of the public’s aspirations. If we begin to work on the basis that there’s more to the quality of life than the standard of living, and that the quality of our shared environment helps to determine the quality of our lives, maybe we can begin to speak a language which people will understand.

    For this to happen, Government needs to ask itself what it is there to achieve, and to understand that, without the active support of people, nothing will happen at all.
    As Iain Duncan Smith has said:

    “People’s best intentions are defeated if doing the right thing actually makes them worse off. The job of Government is to align people’s best interest with their self-interest; to make it easier for people to follow their natural inclination to care for the environment; it is about giving purpose and direction to what people are prepared to do for free”.

    In practical terms, this means for example making it easier for households first to reduce the amount of waste they generate and then to recycle more of it. The costs of doing this need to be seen against the costs of not doing it – the financial, environmental and political costs of, say, large scale waste incineration or landfill, and I don’t need to tell people in Sheffield about those.

    As you may know, the Conservatives are presently engaged in a fundamental review of policy. The development of detailed policy will come later, but this does not prevent us from articulating some basic principles from which specific ideas will evolve.

    We believe in reducing the power and the role of the state; in increasing the opportunity and choice which people can exercise in their own lives; in providing security for our citizens; and in supporting enterprise.

    How might these principles be applied to the environment?

    Firstly, we recognise that the environment is not simply a national issue; that there is a need to work with the EU and other international organisations to forge binding global commitments to meet our obligations to future generations. I am delighted by the progress made towards ratification of the Kyoto Treaty. Though there remains much to do to persuade the developing world that it is in their interest to join up, and of course the onus is now on the US to come alongside the rest of the developed world.

    Secondly, we accept that there is a role for regulation to control activities which are contributing to climate change or which threaten the local environment . But regulation should be carefully targeted, properly thought through in genuine consultation, simple and effective. There are too many complex and overlapping regulations at present; the result can be a bureaucratic nightmare which hinders compliance and gives environmental protection a bad name. Law of unexpected consequences is an every present risk. The hugely expansive shambles of fridge mountains is an object lesson in exactly how not to regulate.

    We need to establish a more mature relationship between Government and industry; one which avoids arbitrary intervention but is based instead on a recognition of mutual needs, abilities and responsibilities.

    Thirdly, we believe that there is a role for fiscal intervention in the interests of a better environment. But we must ensure that environmental taxes actually deal with environmental problems.

    A Climate Change Levy which does virtually nothing to prevent climate change but which costs manufacturing industry £ million and exports jobs to countries with lower environmental standards is obviously counter-productive.

    An Aggregates Tax which nobody, including the Treasury, understands and which simply increases imports of products made from aggregates is plainly likely to fail.

    If we are to have taxes which discourage environmentally damaging activities let’s be straight forward. For example, if we are concerned about the impact of carbon emissions on the future viability of the planet (and we should be) shouldn’t we be thinking about taxing carbon emissions and seek to persuade other countries to do the same?

    Fourthly, we need to get away from the idea that Government action, the passing of new laws and regulations, is the answer to everything.

    I went into politics because I believed in its power to make things happen, not to stop them happening.

    It is important to emphasise that I am not advocating a laissez fair approach to the environment, the stakes are far too high for that. On the contrary, I believe that we need a step change in our approach to tackling environmental problems which reflects both the urgency of the need for action and the scale of the business challenge which this presents. Instead of seeing environmental improvement as a problem, we should start to see it as an opportunity.

    That’s what companies like Shell and BP are doing. Across the world, Shell is working on the delivery of 1,000 megawatts of renewable wind energy, aiming not only to achieve major environmental benefits but also to improve security of energy supply through diversification. The company is also now investing heavily in a joint venture to develop, manufacture and market hydrogen storage units which make use of the emerging science of fuel cell technology. They claim that fuel cells, which could revolutionise the way we power vehicles, are “the power plant of the future”.

    Last week, Lord Browne of Madingley, the Chairman of BP, made a speech in Stanford, Connecticut in which he detailed how, in the last 5 years, BP has cut the level of its own CO2 emissions by 14 million tonnes. They have achieved this through efficiency and technology, and through better management of the energy they use. The result has not only been beneficial to the environment, but also beneficial to the business.

    He also drew attention to BP’s investment in renewable energy sources, where their work on photovoltaics is on track to deliver 300 megawatts of solar panels each year by 2007 – supplying five million people. The market for these products is at present very small, but it is growing at around 40% this year and, particularly given the massive scope for their use in the developing world, the potential is immense.

    I have chosen to highlight BP and Shell because they have traditionally been regarded as environmental villains. Whilst their mainstream activities still depend on the exploitation of non-renewable resources, they have seen the new market opening up for cleaner, greener technology – and they want to be part of it. They will need to be part of it if they want to retain leading positions in the energy market of the 21st Century.

    The present global market for environmental products and services is worth around $515 billion, and it is forecast to grow to nearly $700 billion by 2010. That makes it not only one of the world’s largest business sectors, but one of the fastest growing. In the UK the market is already worth £16 billion and is thought to sustain some 170,000 jobs – and they can’t all be local authority inspectors.

    I want to see more British companies playing a leading role in developing new technologies which will not only mean new high quality jobs, but also a cleaner, safer, more sustainable planet.

    In the end, it will be up to you in industry to take up this challenge. But it is Government’s job to set the framework in which you can maximise the opportunities which are out there. You will not be helped if the Government’s mind-set remains wedded to outmoded concepts of tax and regulation. Already, Germany, Austria and Denmark, for example, are moving ahead of us; and it is interesting to note that the examples I used earlier from Shell and BP involve investment in overseas markets, not in the UK. There is a real danger of Britain being left behind.

    Just as we need policies that make it easier for people to care for the environment, to align their best interest with their self interest, so we need policies which do the same for business.

    We need an approach from Government that moves beyond flailing sticks which all too often miss the target, and offers instead some carrots if we are to take advantage of 21st century technology for the benefit of the planet, and the bottom line.

    Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution the interests of economic development and the interests of the environment have essentially been in conflict. It is a conflict we cannot allow to continue, and forging a reconciliation between these two forces is one of the great challenges to our generation of politicians, businesses and citizens. I believe not only that it can be done, but that it must be done.

  • Caroline Spelman – 1997 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

    Caroline Spelman – 1997 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

    The maiden speech made by Caroline Spelman, the then Conservative MP for Meriden, on 19 June 1997.

    I am grateful for the opportunity to make my maiden speech. I thank the House in advance for listening, given the foreshortened length of the debate. The House will appreciate that I pay tribute to my predecessor, Iain Mills, with a note of sadness. He was much respected in Meriden as a good constituency Member. He worked hard for those in need, especially in Chelmsley Wood in the north of the constituency, where he helped to secure a local Benefits Agency office. The sad circumstances of Iain’s death must be a challenge to us all not to let a colleague down and to try harder to help colleagues facing problems or ill health. The House will want to reassure his widow that Iain’s tragedy will strengthen our resolve to care for each other in the years ahead.

    I wanted to speak in the debate on agriculture because of the acute pressures on the countryside in my constituency, especially the Meriden gap, a narrow corridor of green belt only six miles wide at its narrowest point between Coventry and Birmingham. As a newcomer to the area, selected only 11 weeks before the general election, I was struck by the fragile character of this rural area. Meriden, as the name implies, lies at the very centre of England and boasts excellent communications. With Birmingham international airport, the west coast main line and the midlands motorway network passing through, one can reach London, Bristol, Manchester, Paris or Amsterdam in an hour and a half—except on a bad day, in which case one would be jolly lucky to get to Wolverhampton in that time.

    Meriden has conceded some of its best countryside to the prestigious national exhibition centre, a beneficiary of those good communications. That illustrates the willingness of my constituents to move with the times and be well connected, to welcome the facilities of modern business and transportation. However, that comes at a price. One can still find idyllic green country lanes in the villages of Barston, Berkswell and Hampton in Arden, but rising over the brow of the hill one is soon reminded of the proximity of the cities by the sound of traffic and the glow of lights.

    What happens to the Meriden countryside will depend on the future shape of the common agricultural policy. The beef crisis has placed an exceptional strain on small family farms devoted to dairy and beef farming. Uncertainty has probably been the greatest strain. As we have heard that the incidence of BSE has fallen from 1,000 cases a week to 100 and that there is a prospect of eradicating the disease by 2001, a timetable for lifting the ban must now be possible. Meriden’s small farms are small by British standards, but they are far from small in European terms. It is the Meriden-sized farms that may fall through the gap between very small farms, which are supported to prevent the desertification of the countryside as in rural Greece or Portugal, and the large farms typical of the Beauce in the Paris basin, which could probably survive with no support at all. I hope that the Minister agrees that any move towards modulation would be counter-productive to efforts to reform the CAP into a more market-oriented policy. It would disadvantage British farmers and could result in Meriden’s farms going under concrete for ever.

    Meriden’s farmers will also struggle to compete if the support system for the CAP is not overhauled before the enlargement of the European Union. Anyone who has visited the vast collectivised farms of eastern Europe will realise the competitive advantage that they would enjoy, with their economies of scale and low wage costs. Unless the CAP is reformed into its separate economic and social aspects, it will collapse under the strain of supporting huge east European farms with unrealistic subsidies. I urge the new Government to fight hard to prevent British farmers from being disadvantaged by CAP reform and to watch out for the national aids that are often used by European countries to offset the impact of reform but distort agricultural markets.

    Only a small percentage of my constituents are farmers, but the land that they tend, and the environment that it offers, is what attracts many more people to quit the city and raise their families in a relatively healthy, safe and harmonious environment. Those who choose to live in the leafy suburbs of Knowle and Dorridge have weighed up the benefits of dwelling poised between town and country. All too often, I am shown new developments where once stood bluebell woods and open fields. Residents are right to protest at the loss of the rural amenity for which they originally moved to the area. This is where the values of middle England are nurtured: honesty, fairness and mutual respect. To undermine this fragile framework, in which young people are brought up and the elderly retire with security and pleasure, would be a step backwards from the rural legacy that made England a green and pleasant land.

  • Alok Sharma – 2022 Comments on Visit to Vietnam

    Alok Sharma – 2022 Comments on Visit to Vietnam

    The comments made by Alok Sharma, the President of COP26, on 27 August 2022.

    Urgent action is needed to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees and help build prosperous, low-carbon, resilient communities across the planet.

    The proposed Just Energy Transition Partnership provides an excellent opportunity for Viet Nam to accelerate its transition away from coal in delivery of its 2050 net zero target. I am pleased to be back in Viet Nam to engage with government ministers, public sector bodies, business leaders, local communities, and civil society to discuss ways we can work together for effective climate action.

    A clean, just energy transition not only delivers enhanced climate action, it will help create new jobs, economic growth, clean air and a resilient, prosperous future.

  • Liz Truss – 2015 Speech at Agrihive on UK Businesses Exporting Food

    Liz Truss – 2015 Speech at Agrihive on UK Businesses Exporting Food

    The speech made by Liz Truss, the then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, at the Agrihive Conference on 18 November 2015.

    We have some of the most exciting and inventive people in our food and farming industry in this country. And one of the things we’re doing is tonight, we’re launching Great British Food, which is a new campaign celebrating those pioneers, but also talking about how we can get the message out about how exciting British food is, how exciting British farming is, and what we are doing here in our industry to make sure that we can compete internationally, as well as make sure we’re buying selling and growing more British food here in our own country. And there’s been a lot of work in the dairy area.

    I know a lot of exciting innovations. Only a couple of weeks ago when I announced the extension of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, I visited the Wensleydale Creamery, and I think it’s a brilliant example of a business which operates within a national park. It succeeded in expanding and it does very good job with local farmers, so they are supplying the milk to the dairy. It also promotes itself as a visitor attraction and it’s attracting increasing visitors in the Yorkshire Dales.

    In fact I first came across the people from Wensleydale in Paris, when they were at the CL trade fair and their stand was being mobbed by Japanese buyers wanting to buy into that unique product from Yorkshire. It’s a protected product and I think success stories like Wensleydale who’ve now launched their first yoghurt product. This shows what can happen and where dairy businesses can succeed in the future. I’ve said before at the moment we’ve got a big opportunity on products, we still import the majority of our butter and our cheese. We import 40,000 tonnes of cheddar every year which after all, is a British product kicked off here in the UK.

    So I think there are opportunities, of course we know that many farmers are struggling at the moment and we’ve worked hard at a European level to secure that additional funding, which will be paid in December. We’re also making sure that the BPS payments go out on time which I know many farmers are concerned about, but what we also need to do whilst making sure we retain the strength of our industry in the short term is building up those longer term opportunities.

    So we’re working at looking at the grocery chain adjudicator now at a European level to reflect the nature of the food chain and the way it goes beyond national boundaries. We’re looking at futures markets in dairy to help farmers plan for the future. And we’re consulting on tax averaging over five years to help farmers maintain those long term businesses. We’re also very focused on exports and we’ve seen a 60% increase in dairy exports since 2009. I think there are many more opportunities out there. I’ve highlighted Wensleydale, but we’ve got a whole host of dairy companies coming with us next week on our visit to China on our trade mission to China.

    So there are lots of opportunities but I think an event like this Agrihive, that really involves the leaders of the industry. And those working with the industry is really important to get those ideas out there to look at the pioneering efforts across British dairy, because I’m absolutely clear that dairy is a core part of our food and farming industry. You know, we need to not just maintain it for the long term, but also help build up the industry and I think it is the pioneers. It’s the people with ideas, with new ways of doing things, to make sure that we can maintain our productivity, our competitiveness, and really win in those international markets.

    It’s really important of course, the government is a very big procurer of food. Last year we launched the Bonfield report, which is all about making it easier for public sector bodies like schools and hospitals to buy British food so they can now look at things like where it’s from, is it local, they can look at the quality of the product, rather than just going on the price and that is having an impact. We are seeing more British dairy bought across the public sector. And I want see more progress on that in the next few years.

    So we’re setting an example in government. I think there’s more we can do across the country to support our dairy industry and we are in discussions with supermarkets as well about that, but also, the industry has a major role to play in putting itself forward in grasping those potential. opportunities both here and overseas. But thank you very much for having me along today. It’s a great innovation and I hope to see you all soon. Thank you

  • David Lidington – 2003 Speech on a Fair Deal for the Dairy Industry

    David Lidington – 2003 Speech on a Fair Deal for the Dairy Industry

    The speech made by David Lidington, the then Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, on 17 September 2003.

    The Dairy Industry is going through a period of drastic and painful change.

    The rules of the market place are changing in three significant ways. First, we are seeing the gradual opening up of world trade and the dismantling of production subsidies.

    Despite the failure of the WTO talks in Cancun, the world looks almost certain to continue moving, albeit hesitantly and erratically, towards the further liberalisation of international markets.

    The enlargement of the European Union from 15 to 25 members will lead to an increase of about one fifth in total EU milk production and more vigorous competition for British producers in some of our traditional export markets.

    Together, enlargement and the push towards global free trade are bringing change to the Common Agricultural Policy. The need to limit the overall CAP budget and the growing political pressure from churches and charities to help developing countries will, in my view, lead to export subsidies being reduced or phased out all together.

    Second, the structure of the food industry is changing. Retailing is already dominated by a handful of big players and I hope that the sale of Safeway does not lead to a further reduction in the number of national supermarket chains. Meanwhile, both catering and food processing are following the pattern already set by the retail industry. Both sectors are consolidating, giving us a market with fewer big players and fewer food factories.

    Third, customers’ demands and shopping habits are changing. I welcome the rise of farmers’ markets and internet sales of food but the figure that leaps out of the Curry Report is that more than 95 per cent of us do our main shopping at a supermarket. Customers value the convenience, price and variety that the big retailers offer and I see little prospect of that changing.

    More people live on their own, in most couples both partners work. Fewer people are willing to make time to prepare fresh food. The demand for ready-to-eat meals is rising.

    If we look at dairying, figures from the Institute of Grocery Distribution show that demand for traditional dairy products – full fat milk and cheddar cheese – is static or declining. The growth in demand is for value added products, for skimmed milk, yoghurt and fromage frais.

    There is a market for speciality products – I want to be the first in the queue for cheese like Llanboidy or Stinking Bishop. And there is a demand for novelty foods. When I read about the prospect of Tandoori flavoured cheddar, I want to run a mile. But it does actually offer the possibility of a new market for British dairy producers.

    What should politicians do to help dairy farmers to meet these various challenges?

    I want to see British farmers make profits. The job of government should be to help make it possible for them to do so.

    That doesn’t mean that politicians should be taking business decisions. Governments have a dire record of picking winners in business. Not even the brightest and best in Whitehall or Brussels is likely to be able to tell you which cheese or ice cream is about to become the customers favourite. Farmers, not civil servants, let alone politicians, have the enterprise and ingenuity to produce the food that customers will want to buy. That is why I believe that the future lies in a world where farmers are free to respond to the signals from their customers rather than those from government. The duty of government is to help create the economic conditions in which farm businesses can prosper.

    I believe that government should be fighting to get a fair deal for British agriculture in the EU and the WTO, that we should make changes to the home market to give domestic producers a better chance and that we should be helping farmers to cut their costs by a different approach to regulation and determined action against disease.

    We are meeting just a couple of days after the collapse of the Cancun negotiations and before the Trade Secretary has made any statement to Parliament about the reasons for that failure. So it is difficult to speak with any certainty about what is likely to happen next, though I can truthfully claim to have expressed doubts ever since the Luxembourg Agreement that the partial and incomplete decoupling regime agreed then by the EU would be sufficient to secure progress at the WTO.

    There are two things in particular that I regard as important in further WTO talks. The first is that the burden of making concessions to help the poorest countries in the world should be shared fairly amongst all the developed nations. For once, American rhetoric about free trade needs to be matched by American practice. Second, we have to find a way in which to write animal welfare into the rules governing international trade so that our producers do not suffer on account of the welfare standards that we as a society impose upon them.

    When it comes to the Mid Term Review, I support the principle that the link between farm support and production should be broken. But I am worried that the concessions made to France and others in terms of both the timing and the scale of decoupling may lead to market distortions and the fact that “degressivity” has now been renamed “financial discipline” cannot conceal the fact that British farmers are going to be expected to pay a disproportionately large share of the costs of CAP reform.

    However, the priority now must be for the Government to announce clear decisions on how it plans to implement what was agreed at Luxembourg. Whatever its flaws, that is the deal to which the Government has signed up and it is vital that farmers are told how they will stand under the new support arrangements.

    If decoupling is to come in as early as 2005, farmers need to take decisions by the end of this year in order to plan their businesses. Uncertainty over the precise implications of the Mid Term Review is causing turbulence in the quota market (already in some turmoil following the Thomsen case) and in the market for land. People need to know what the new rules mean for them.

    The Government also needs to come clean about cost compliance. One of the big attractions of decoupling is that it will sweep away a lot of form filling and red tape. That will be of little account if we simply substitute a host of new rules in the name of the environment. Nor is it clear how the standards required of farmers under cross compliance will relate to those that will have to be met to get into the “broad and shallow” environmental payments scheme.

    One further point about Europe – with the end of OTMS, it is vital that DEFRA makes it a priority to campaign for the lifting of the date based export scheme to ease the pressure on the home market. I was dismayed to read that Health Ministers are stalling over whether to implement the recommendation from the Food Standards Agency that to allow Over 30 Month beef back into the food chain. That kind of hesitation will only give ammunition to those on the Continent who want to maintain export restrictions.

    When it comes to the domestic market, I know that the chief concern amongst dairy farmers is that the farm gate price of milk often does not even cover the cost of production, let alone give you a decent return.

    Those worries have undoubtedly been made worse by the collapse of United Milk. I think that it is in everyone’s interest that the receivers are able to sell United Milk as a going concern and I hope that the business remains in the hands of farmers themselves. A takeover by one of the other cooperatives would of course raise issues of market share and it is vital that the OFT recognises the need of the industry and does not block a merger on competition grounds. The last thing that we need is a “Son of Milk Marque” judgement.

    We will need to look at the implications of last week’s ruling from the ECJ but I am already persuaded that we need to overhaul the competition rules as they affect farmers’ cooperatives. If British farmers want to follow the path of the profitable cooperatives that we see in New Zealand or on the continent, they should be free to do so. If politicians tell farmers that we expect you to compete in a European and global market place, then our competition rules should be framed to take account of that fact rather than looking solely at domestic market share.

    We also need stricter rules on labelling. A British shopper should be able to tell instantly whether the food she is buying came from British producers or not. I acknowledge that there are practical issues to be worked out over processed foods that contain ingredients from a number of different countries. But the current situation, where food can be grown abroad, processed here and still labelled as “UK” is unfair to our farmers and amounts to fraud on consumers.

    At a time when dairying is going through a traumatic recession, government should be making every conceivable effort to reduce the costs that it imposes on farmers. Too often that is not the case. Regulations are agreed and imposed without adequate thought being given to the practical, including the financial, implications. We all know the examples: nitrate vulnerable zones, fallen stock, not to mention the sheer incompetence of the Rural Payments Agency. Even after the Government had conceded the principle of a ban on the burial of fallen stock, it could have used exemptions and derogations to allow time for an alternative system of disposal to be put in place. Ministers agreed to delay the implementation of the Animal By-products Regulation for waste food from retailers. It should have done the same. Other countries were more ingenious. The Spaniards even secured a derogation to allow carcasses to be left on the hills as a conservation measure to preserve vultures!

    We could all draw up our list of regulations that we would like to see repealed or amended. But more important still I believe is to bring about a change in the whole culture of regulation in this country. We need much earlier consultation with industry, much more effective scrutiny by Parliament (especially of secondary legislation), an end to the gold plating of Brussels’ Directives. We need sunset clauses embodied in new rules so that they lapse automatically after a given period unless renewed. That way, we give everyone the chance to assess how the rules have worked out in practice and to make changes.

    We need to end the duplication of forms and inspections that waste hours of time that would be better used running your business and winning customers. Government should adopt a risk-based approach to regulation. It is not necessary to monitor and inspect every enterprise every single year. Different agencies should make use of the same body of information and not insist on sending out their own special list of questions and tick boxes. A single set of data for each farm business, filed on line, could surely be interrogated by the different regulatory bodies and remove the need for much of the paperwork.

    The other issue raised with me at every meeting I have had with dairy farmers has been Bovine Tuberculosis. This is now developing into as great a threat as Foot and Mouth Disease. The latest figures show that 4,200 herds were under restriction during the first half of this year. More than 15,000 beasts have been slaughtered. In 2002 the cost of TB to taxpayers was between 80 and 90 million pounds and while that figure included compensation payments it did not cover the costs borne by farmers through the disruption of their businesses. This year, those costs will be much higher.

    There are still more than 3,000 herd tests overdue. It must be a top priority to eliminate that backlog altogether and to ensure that reactors are quickly removed from the farm.

    Restocking after Foot and Mouth was almost certainly responsible for bringing Bovine TB into Cumbria. I think we will need firm rules on testing both before and after movement to avoid such a thing happening again.

    We have to revisit the issue of culling. Yes, the way in which disease is transmitted between wildlife and cattle is complex and still not wholly understood. But the Irish evidence is clear. Culling, in combination with other disease control measures, can bring about a big reduction in the incidence of TB. There are now disturbing reports that TB is found, not just in the badger population, but amongst deer on Exmoor and in the New Forest.

    On both economic and animal welfare grounds, this situation should not be allowed to continue. Where there is clear scientific evidence that local wildlife has become infected with TB, the government should be prepared to authorise culling of the diseased populations.

    The long term answer has to come through developing effective vaccines. This needs to move to the top of DEFRA’s research agenda and when the Irish Government is carrying out field trials on a BCG vaccine for wildlife we should be saying to Dublin that we would like to take part in that experiment.

    The Dairy Industry is going through a time of great difficulty and challenge. No politician could come to this event and say truthfully that he, or for that matter any government of any political colour, had all the answers. But I believe there are initiatives that Ministers could and should take to show dairy farmers that their government is on their side and will fight to get them a fair deal in a rapidly changing world.

  • Mary Creagh – 2012 Comments on Woodlands

    Mary Creagh – 2012 Comments on Woodlands

    The comments made by Mary Creagh, the then Shadow Environment Secretary, on 11 January 2012.

    This new report [Our Forests report into woodlands and the environment] is a welcome addition to the debate about the future of our forests. Our woodlands are a precious reflection of our national heritage, and will play a pivotal role in the green economy and our low carbon future.

    The forest sell-off debacle demonstrated just how out of touch the Tory-led Government is with anyone who cares about the environment. Labour has already called on Ministers to listen to public concern and drop their remaining plans to sell 15% of England’s forests.

  • Sadiq Khan – 2022 Comments on Tree Planting Projects in London

    Sadiq Khan – 2022 Comments on Tree Planting Projects in London

    The comments made by Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, on 28 July 2022.

    The extreme temperatures and fires that raged across the capital last week laid bare how vulnerable London is to the effects of climate change, which is why today I’ve pledged a further £3.1m for a mass tree-planting package to help limit the impacts of the climate emergency and the ecological crisis. These additional street trees and improvements to green spaces are targeted in areas where they’re most needed and will improve resilience of neighbourhoods in our city.

    The climate emergency is the biggest global threat we face today and we know that it doesn’t impact all Londoners equally, with communities suffering poverty, deprivation and health inequalities more likely to experience the worst effects of flooding, overheating and poor quality air. As Mayor, I will continue my bold action to preserve and increase tree coverage across the capital as we build a better, greener and more sustainable London for everyone.

  • Steve Double – 2022 Comments on 10p Bag Charge

    Steve Double – 2022 Comments on 10p Bag Charge

    The comments made by Steve Double, the Environment Minister, on 29 July 2022.

    Our plastic bag charge has ended the sale of billons of single-use bags, protecting our landscapes and ensuring millions of pounds is redistributed to worthy causes.

    There is much more to do to tackle the problem of plastic waste. That is why we are building on our single-use plastic bans and introducing the deposit return scheme for bottles to fight back against littering and drive up recycling rates.