Kerry McCarthy
MP for Bristol East · Labour · United Kingdom
“We see that in four main ways: physical risks, including floods, wildfires, droughts and storms; transition risks as economies move away from high-carbon industries; nature-related risks affecting food production and natural resources; and systemic risks, where shocks spread rapidly across sectors and markets.”
“The glaciers of the third pole function as Asia’s water tower, feeding major river systems that support nearly 2 billion people. When rising temperatures accelerate glacial melt, the consequences extend far beyond the mountains.”
“Following the heatwaves and wildfires across Europe this summer and the destruction caused by the glacier collapse and catastrophic flooding in Nepal and Tibet, the message is becoming impossible to ignore: the consequences of climate change and environmental degradation are real, not some distant future threat.”
“Personally, I cannot see that Rosebank is compatible with meeting our climate objectives, but I recognise that the process should be followed. Green Alliance has reported that the gas being wasted in the North sea would be enough to heat 570,000 homes.”
“I too worked in the financial markets, although I think I have done a better job of hiding it in my 21 years in Parliament. I was more on the debt market side. In fact, I am so old that I was part of the salvage operation for Barings bank when it went under. That brings me to the right hon. Gentleman’s point about regulation.”
“My hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that I very much agree with the point that he just made. We have some excellent, innovative businesses in Bristol that came up through the Science Creates innovation hubs and attracted private capital.”
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“That was followed in 2006 by the launch of the sustainable schools strategy, which encouraged schools to follow the recommendations in the eight doorways, which were: buildings and grounds; energy and water; travel and traffic; food and drink; purchasing and waste; local wellbeing; inclusion and participation; and the global dimension. Through that, they would have become completely sustainable schools by 2020. Unfortunately, the strategy was scrapped by the Government in 2010. In 2006, the Government launched the “Learning Outside the Classroom” manifesto, which promoted outdoor learning as an essential part of education, whether that was in school grounds and the local area or visits further afield and residential trips.”
“Young people should also learn about climate change, the impact our behaviour is having on the planet and how we can address that. They should learn about where our food comes from and why what we grow and eat matters. It is not just about acquiring knowledge for the sake of it; it is about children’s mental and physical wellbeing and equipping them for life as adults, enjoying nature and living sustainably. The fact is that they love learning about these things, and I will come on to that later. The last Labour Government took environmental education seriously. In 2000, education for sustainable development was introduced as a non-statutory element of the curriculum.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered environmental and food system education in schools. My reasons for calling this debate were twofold: to highlight some of the positive work already being done in schools and to call on the Government to go further and embed some of this work in the curriculum or support it across all schools. It is so important that our young people learn about the wonders of our natural environment and our wildlife, how we should respect them and how we should take care of them for future generations. Many are also calling for animal welfare to be taught in schools. If young people were taught respect for animals at an early stage, perhaps that would make a difference with some of the horrific crimes that we see carried out against animals.”
“The Dominican Republic, which is at great risk of climate change, established mandatory climate change education in schools in 1998. Australia introduced its national environmental education plan in 2000. Brazil’s educational guidelines required climate change to be taught in all subjects from 1998. The Philippines introduced climate change into the curriculum in 2009. Vietnam did it in 2008. Costa Rica has been doing it since the 1980s. If those countries can do it, we ought to do it in the UK, too.”
“The makers of future “Blue Planets” could be in schools just waiting to have their imaginations fired. In conclusion, we need to go further and not simply leave initiatives to the schools that have decided to run with them. We must embed them in the curriculum across the board. It could take the form of embedding the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals into lesson plans. It has been disappointing so far that when the Environmental Audit Committee has taken evidence from the Government, they still seem to see the SDGs as something that we do in developing countries rather than something that we are embedding into the way we do things here. School procurement decisions could be used to teach children about healthy eating. I want to flag up a few countries that have gone further than the UK. I hope we can look at them as examples.”
“The food sector is a huge part of the economy, and innovative, value-added products are the future of that industry. Innovation is going on at Harper Adams University. We need to engage young people and get them interested in careers in that field. There is the waste sector, energy sector, many high-tech engineering jobs, and renewable energy and eco-housing sectors. There are so many things that young people could be inspired to do. It is almost obligatory in environmental debates these days to mention “Blue Planet”. The BBC natural history unit, based in Bristol, is behind amazing series such as “Planet Earth” and “Blue Planet”. In 2012, it teamed up with the University of the West of England to co-design a masters course in wildlife filmmaking, which is certainly something for young people to aspire to. Who knows?”
“The school describes how children with special education needs, many of whom do not normally enjoy reading, benefit from the way that being in the outdoors relieves stress and anxiety, develops their social skills, motivates learning and allows them to be practical, responsible and productive members of the school’s community. I am aware of the time, so I will skim over this quickly. The skills, knowledge and enjoyment benefit children when they become adults, too. In 2014, Lantra estimated that there were 230,000 businesses and 1.3 million employees working in the land and environmental industries, and that many more would be required by 2020. The horticultural and agricultural sectors are currently experiencing a skills shortage.”
“A great quote from one forest school leader summarises this: “Children have fun during forest school, and so the place in which they have fun becomes important to them—keeping that environment cared for matters to them.” It has also been shown to have a particularly remarkable impact on the development of students with special educational needs. Sulivan Primary School in Fulham maintains a reading forest for its students, where children can find books “growing” on trees and in tents, as well as a wildlife garden, pond and vegetable plot.”
“The Carnegie Mellon school reported up to 26% higher test scores in classrooms with ample natural light, with the addition of plants leading to score improvements of 14%. That seems a strange connection to make, but that was the result of its survey. The 2005 report by the National Foundation for Educational Research, “The benefits of a forest school experience”, stated: “While watching their children explore the woodland, the parents expressed their wonder at the level of independence and confidence their children were showing”, and would in the future encourage more freedom outdoors, “perhaps out of sight in a secure environment, leave the busy paths and let their children lead the way.” So it is not just something that takes place in the classroom; it is outside the classroom as well.”
“Earthwise, an organisation focused on reconnecting young people with food, farming and the natural world, runs a forest school locally and works with the community farm in Chew Magna in Somerset to deliver educational visits, seasonal cookery days and holiday activities throughout the year. I do not have time today to go into the need to teach young children how to cook the food, but that is important, too. A report by Forest Research, “A marvellous opportunity to learn”, found that children who regularly attend forest school sessions noticeably developed in confidence and independence, with social and team-working skills, better motivation and concentration and better physical skills and fine motor skills. It is a wonderful programme. Even small physical changes can have a huge positive impact on children.”
“The Food Growing in Schools Taskforce’s March 2012 report found that green activities in schools result in “significant learning, skills, health and well-being outcomes for children”. Surveys conducted by the Learning through Landscapes organisation found that 73% of teachers reported improved pupil behaviour, and 64% reported reduced bullying. Another initiative that has enjoyed huge success in the UK recently is forest schools, where young children attend lessons in woodland environments. Forest schools have flourished in Bristol. We have had one since 2004 and it has its own woodland to use for sessions.”
“The leftovers were then fed into a wormery and they were shown how that worked, which was the bit they loved, of course, with all those squirming worms coming out of the bottom of it. They were then shown how the compost for the wormery helps to grow more basil. It was brilliant to see the kids so involved and learning things about food that they had never heard before. A project in my constituency, Growing Futures, has a campfire where kids can sit around and talk. People with mental health issues go along as well. The project is also about growing food and it teaches young children about it in a fairly informal setting. We very much want to incorporate that into the Feeding Bristol project that we are running to tackle food poverty in the city.”
“It also encourages schools to visit farms. It has Grandparent Gardening Week from 19 to 23 March. It gets local allotment holders, grandparents and so on into schools to help set up school gardens for the growing season. That is a great way of engaging the community in what goes on in schools. In Bristol, where the Soil Association is based, I went along to Bristol Metropolitan Academy, which is a secondary school. It had the local primary schools come along to take part in something that showed the circle of life of food. The younger kids turned up having grown basil in their schools. They were then shown by a food waste chef, Shane Jordan, how to cook pasta and make a sauce with the basil.”
“I think that is important. It is something FACE encourages. There is also the “FaceTime a farmer” scheme, which was started by Tom Martin, a Cambridgeshire farmer. It teams farmers up with schools. They use FaceTime or Skype to make video calls to classrooms. That is obviously no substitute for getting out on the farms, but it is a good initiative. The Woodland Trust has flagged up with me that it has the free trees programme and the Green Tree School Awards. It is taking those things into schools, and they are incredibly popular. Another great initiative is the Soil Association’s Food for Life catering award for food quality, which more than 10,000 UK schools currently possess. To become accredited, the school is required to use locally sourced and seasonal produce, maintain in-school gardens and develop students’ practical green skills.”
“At this point I feel obliged, as I always do when “Blue Planet” is mentioned, to say that the BBC natural history unit is based in Bristol and does tremendous work. The Minister touched on the issue of plastic pollution. Is he aware of the recent study by the University of Hull and the British Antarctic Survey, which found that plastic pollution in the Antarctic was five times as bad as predicted? To deal with the problem, it is not enough to create marine protected areas; we must do much more to tackle the problem of microplastics at source.”
“I have asked questions in the Chamber about what they are doing about plastics pollution, and they have very proudly said, “We put the tax on plastic bags and are introducing a ban on microbeads,” but that is simply a drop in the ocean. We must go much further, much more quickly.”
“Only a very small percentage of microplastics in our oceans are made up of microbeads. A 2016 Japanese study put the figure at 9.7% and European studies have put it as low as 0.1% or, at the most, 4.1%. Most microplastics in our oceans are larger plastics that have broken down from bottles, packaging, old fishing nets and so on—in other words, anything that has not been recycled or disposed of correctly—so a ban on microbeads is clearly not enough to make significant inroads into reducing plastic pollution in the ocean. We must look at the bigger picture, tackle the amount of single-use plastics used and produced, introduce a deposit return scheme for plastic bottles and so on. The Environment Secretary announced a four-point plan today, but the slowness with which the Government are approaching this agenda is frustrating.”
“It has called for reconsideration of the exemption of polymers from REACH—the registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals scheme. The Minister has appeared before the Environmental Audit Committee to talk about what happens to REACH post-Brexit, which is a whole other can of worms that we could open. Does she think that polymers should be included under REACH or whatever the British equivalent will be once we leave? The foundation is calling for the European Union to impose and enforce a ban on all polymer ingredients that are persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic to ecosystems. I have used the term “microplastics” rather than “microbeads” throughout because, if we look at the harm they can cause to our aquatic environment, we will see that it is pretty meaningless to separate the two.”
“Why do we not take the example of the best companies, which have phased out such products, and say that everyone else has to follow suit? Following the ban on testing cosmetics on animals, people are now pushing for a ban on such testing with household products, and I think that the same should apply to products containing microplastics. Although the UK cleaning products industry says that it does not use microplastic ingredients in any product, that is not true of products of non-UK manufacturers that can be sold and used here. I do not see why the ban cannot be extended to them. The Plastic Soup Foundation, which campaigns for plastic-free oceans, also supports a ban on microbeads in leave-on as well as rinse-off products.”
“The Minister said that there is not much evidence that they enter the water—she said that they are wiped off—but clearly, if people go for a swim wearing sunscreen and deodorant, that will get into the water pretty quickly or when they have a shower back in their hotel room. There are plenty of products that people can use that do not contain harmful microbeads. I find this frustrating. There is a ban on animal testing of cosmetic products. It is easy to find alternatives to such products and the same is true of products containing microbeads. Why do we let the market simply lead the way and say that consumers are able to choose? Labelling is an issue and consumers may not necessarily know what they are really buying.”
“We know about the plight of coral reefs because of ocean acidification and ocean warming, but microplastic is another factor that causes great harm. As has been said, over time microplastics will accumulate toxins attracted to their surface—pesticides, flame retardants, motor oil and other industrial chemicals —so they too are entering the food chain. The scale of the problem is immense. As my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax and organisations such as Greenpeace have said, the ban should not be limited only to rinse-off products. It should also include products such as sunscreens and deodorants.”
“When microplastic gets into the ocean, small animals mistake it for food and risk starvation either because they believe their stomachs are full—instead their stomachs are full of plastic—and they starve as a result, or because of blockages in their intestines, causing death. Microplastic can also be ingested by filter feeders such as bristle worms, sea stars, sea urchins, sea slugs and many other things that my researcher listed for me but that I cannot pronounce so will not read out. They become prey for larger marine creatures, so the microplastic accumulates further up the food chain and eventually ends up in the human food chain too. Microplastic also starves coral species by clogging their digestive systems—in essence, starving the coral reduces its growth and spread.”
“While I am in self-congratulatory mode, I will also say that the report of the Environmental Audit Committee—of which I am a member—on microbeads was trailblazing and important. I will now get on to the less self-congratulatory and more depressing stuff. Our starting point should be to look not at what is easy to ban but at the harm done by microbeads and all microplastics. I have no idea how these things are calculated, but it is estimated that there are 5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing nearly 269,000 tonnes in the ocean, and we have heard that 100,000 microbeads can be washed down the sink in a single application of a rinse-off product. For example, Neutrogena’s Deep Clean, which is an exfoliating scrub, has 300,000 microplastic ingredients in just one tub. That is the scale of the situation.”
“New Zealand is bringing in a ban on the sale of personal care products containing microbeads from July next year, and Taiwan is doing the same. Canada plans to ban microbeads in shower gels, toothpaste and face wash by 1 July 2018, and in natural health products and non-prescription drugs from 1 July 2019. My first question to the Minister is: have we looked at what Canada is trying to do to see whether we can replicate that here? It is almost obligatory to mention “Blue Planet” in such discussions. I point out on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West, who is a Whip and cannot speak in the debate, that the BBC’s natural history unit is in her constituency. We both have many constituents who take great pride in being involved in that unit, which is truly the jewel in the BBC’s crown.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair for what I believe is your first outing, Mr Austin. I hope you will find it a rewarding experience that you will want to repeat. I, too, support the SI, although a little reluctantly. As my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax said from the Front Bench, it is not ambitious enough. As part of our debates in the Chamber last week about the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, we discussed whether the House should have the ability to amend statutory instruments. If that had been possible, I would have tabled amendments to the draft regulations. Given the scale of the microplastics problem, we need to be ambitious and radical, and we need to be ahead of everyone else. Other countries are introducing similar bans. The USA has the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015, which covers only rinse-off products.”
“We saw with the debacle of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership that people were very unhappy with the lack of transparency around such negotiations. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we need a much more transparent and democratic process not only for approving trade deals, but for scrutinising the negotiations as they are going on?”
“Mr Speaker, I know of your long-standing interest in this issue, which you demonstrated when you were on the Back Benches. The report is excellent. As it mentions, some of the refugees may be very reluctant to return to Burma given the treatment they have received. To what extent did the Foreign Affairs Committee consider alternatives to either Burma or Bangladesh? Did it feel that there was support from within the Rohingya community for being moved to somewhere else completely?”
“Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) pointed out that people facing custody are not routinely asked about the situation with respect to their children. When there were riots and looting in London boroughs after the death of Mark Duggan, in quite a few cases women were immediately thrown into custody and no one asked any questions. Single parents were put into custody and no one asked what would happen to their children left at home.”
“Those are the things that we know about the number of children affected, and the make-up of that group, but we do not know anywhere near as much as we should. There is limited published practice knowledge about working with children of prisoners, and a lack of systematic recording and information-sharing. Prisoners will not always reveal that they have children. In many cases it is a child’s step-parent or the partner of their parent rather than their own father who is in prison, but the child will still clearly be greatly affected. As we have heard, courts, Governments and local services do not routinely ask about the children involved; that information is not reported or recorded. Pressures on the probation service and the lack of sentencing reports also mean that the issue is less likely to be picked up. My hon.”
“Far more children have a father than a mother in prison and there are likely to be a disproportionate number of black and minority ethnic children with a parent in prison, because of the make-up of the prison population. The statistics on young offenders institutions show that there are also many young parents in prison. I have visited young offenders institutions as an MP and before that as a lawyer working in the criminal field, and those who do so will have seen young mums turning up with their babies, to visit fathers who are themselves children. A freedom of information request from Barnardo’s in connection with its report of December 2015, “Locked out: Children’s experiences of visiting a parent in prison”, found that children make almost 10,000 visits to public prisons each week.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hosie. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing the debate. We have had some excellent speeches, and Westminster Hall comes into its own in debates on such topics with cross-party consensus. I want to turn the debate around slightly and focus on the 200,000 or so children a year who will have a parent in prison, in England and Wales. That is a rough figure—a Government estimate—and it is difficult to be more precise. We have heard various figures about women in prison. It is estimated that 66% of women in prison have a child under the age of 18, and that a third of them have a child under five, although I have also seen the figure of 51%.”
“I will conclude by coming back to my earlier point. This discussion should not just be about the prisoners and their rights; it should be about the children. When we look at the children of prisoners, we should not just look at their relationship with the parent in prison. It should not just be about how often they see them and whether they maintain connection. They will face a lot of issues, whether at school, through poverty in the family home, or through informal arrangements where they may be passed from one friend of their parent to another. We need to look at those children in the community, not just in relation to the prisoners.”
“As part of the i-HOP scheme in Bristol, Barnardo’s worked with Bristol City Council to create Bristol’s “Charter for Children of Prisoners”, which recommended that children should be helped to write letters, make phone calls or visit if they want to; that children with a parent in prison should be better welcomed and respected by prison staff; that children should be told where their parent is and how long they will be there; that they should have an adult they can talk to in confidence; and that when police arrest someone they should take into account the impact on the child and ensure the situation is explained to them. Probably most importantly, it recommended that professionals such as teachers and nurses should know how many children in Bristol have a parent in prison and how to support them.”
“They also found that liaising with wider family networks, including grandparents, and with schools was vital to provide full support to a child affected by parental imprisonment. The report highlighted particular issues: problems in identifying the children affected, as I have already said, identifying the children’s rights and working out which children need support. The children of prisoners often do not meet the thresholds for children’s social care services to become involved. That means no work takes place with them, and perhaps the thresholds should be reassessed to ensure they are brought into account.”
“In England there is a scheme called i-HOP—the information hub on offenders’ families with children for professionals—which was commissioned by the Department for Education and is run by Barnardo’s. It provides a one-stop information and advice service to support all professionals working with children and families of offenders, including frontline staff, strategic managers and commissioners. It is important that this is placed on professionals’ radar and that they are given advice on how to deal with it. In 2013, Barnardo’s published a report called “Working with children with a parent in prison”, which referred to two pilot schemes called Empowering the Children of Offenders. The pilots were held in Devon and Bristol. They found that parents often struggled to talk to their children about imprisonment and needed support to do so.”
“Under the IEP scheme, fathers’ visits with their children can be withheld at the discretion of the authorities, whereas in female prisons the right is protected, on the basis that children should not be restricted from visiting or contacting the mother because of the mother’s behaviour. The number of visits should not be restricted in order to serve the needs of the incentive schemes, and incentive schemes should not be linked to any access to family visits. That is the rule for mothers, and I do not see why it should not be the case for fathers as well. It is important, and Barnardo’s has called for the IEP scheme in male prisons to be brought into line with that in female prisons. I will say a little bit about the work of Barnardo’s, an organisation that is proactive in this area and doing some excellent work.”
“We could say, “Well, they haven’t earned them,” but we are talking about their families losing that right through no fault of their own. Children in this situation will often have ambivalent feelings toward their parent, because their parent has perhaps done something deliberately that means they have, in effect, abandoned their child. Children will see that their parent has chosen to do something that means they will be locked up and absent from the home, leaving the children to fend for themselves or endure bullying and stigma at school. They should not be doubly punished for the fact that their father is perhaps not displaying exemplary behaviour in prison; they should be allowed that quality time to try to rebuild the relationship with him.”
“Friend the Member for Swansea East that in some cases the father clearly should not retain any influence over the children’s lives. At the moment, in male prisons, children’s visits are classed as a privilege under the incentives and earned privileges scheme. The scheme allocates the duration, frequency and quality of visits according to the behaviour of the offender. That can have quite a severe impact on the frequency and length of visits. Basic status prisoners would be entitled to see their children for a two-hour visit every four weeks, but family visit days are restricted to enhanced prisoners who have displayed exemplary behaviour, for example by studying for qualifications. Therefore, quite a lot of prisoners do not get to have family visit days at all.”
“Also, visiting a parent in prison is not a pleasant experience. In today’s debate there has been a focus on the importance to prisoners of maintaining contact with their children; and the reoffending figures suggest that that is important. It is estimated that 45% of prisoners lose touch with their families and that prisoners are 39% less likely to reoffend if they receive visitors. We also need to look at the impact on the children, as Barnardo’s has tried to do, because what is good for the prisoners is not necessarily good for the children. I will briefly mention fathers’ rights. We have spoken about women receiving visits in prison, but male prisoners are treated differently from female prisoners in the system. I entirely accept the point made by my hon.”
“When Hazel Blears was a Home Office Minister we had conversations about work she was doing to try to identify boys, in particular, who were at risk of offending because of their parents’ situation. There is a need to be careful about that, because we do not want to stigmatise or label children—“Because your father was a bad lot and ended up in jail you are going to go the same way.” A sensitive approach is needed, but we must recognise the particular risk for those children. Trauma can also arise directly from the experience. Children may have seen a parent arrested, sometimes in violent circumstances. They may not have known anything was going on, only for the parent to go off to court one day and disappear. Some children may not even be told that the parent is in jail, and may find out because word has spread around the neighbourhood.”
“The information should be available without the need to do various calculations to put together a picture; but it is excellent that the commissioner realises the importance of the work. It is important to know how many children are affected by parental imprisonment. Such children can face multiple disadvantages, as has been said. Family life is disrupted and it may be necessary to move home. My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston mentioned that half of such children have to change schools. In many cases family income will be lost. For children with a parent in prison there is twice the likelihood of poor conduct and mental health problems, according to a 2008 study. Those children are less likely to do well at school and three times as likely to offend: 65% of boys with a convicted father will go on to be convicted.”
“There would have been some overlap as, for example, one category was children in local authority care, which could include the children of prisoners; but there was not a specific focus on them. I received a good reply this week, in which the commissioner said: “I am very keen to include children of prisoners in the next iteration of the work, but identifying the number of such children is a significant challenge. We are currently working with the ONS to link census data with Dept for Education records of children, this should then enable us to estimate the number of children in families where a parent is in prison. Doing this poses some serious challenges, but if we can do it, then we will be able to use this to get lots of additional information.” Things are not ideal.”
“That might be because of stigma and shame, or the fear of having their children taken into care. Informal kinship care is often arranged, with friends or family stepping in if the parent with caring responsibilities is sent away. There has been some progress in recognising the role of kinship carers in recent years. Edward Timpson, the former Children and Families Minister, took the issue seriously and did some good work on it, which we need to continue. I recently wrote to the Children’s Commissioner about the matter. She had launched a very good report that identified about 15 categories of vulnerable children, and I wrote to her flagging up the fact that the categories of children of prisoners and children in informal kinship care should have been listed but were not.”
“That is absolutely the case, although there will always be exceptions, such as when the parent is seen to be a danger to the public. I used to work at a magistrates court, where women would be sentenced to jail because they had not paid television licence fines. It could be said that they knew they were coming to court and might face custody, but sometimes those people had chaotic lives and were not facing up to the seriousness of their situation, and it would be sensible to give them a chance to make arrangements. In America there is a tendency to use a system that gives people time to prepare for a prison sentence; I do not see why we cannot do that here. Quite often parents going to jail, and their families, keep quiet about the fact that children are involved.”
“The reason we cannot do it properly is because we triggered article 50 too early.”
“There has been near universal recognition that we need to strengthen sifting and scrutiny powers, and there is huge scepticism about the process under schedule 7 for sifting through the 800-plus statutory instruments. There is a suspicion—I believe it to be justified—that it was to avoid much needed parliamentary scrutiny and that it could be used to weaken EU laws in the process of transposition. I understand what the hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) said, which is that there simply is not the time to work through them one by one, but that is why some of us voted against triggering article 50 when the Government chose to rush into it. We knew that this was an incredibly complex procedure and that it would not be easy in the way that some Conservative Members said it would be. We needed the time to do this properly.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hanson. I rise to speak to support new clause 24 and amendment 96, in my name, as well as amendment 104, also in my name, which relates to new clause 27 and others on institutional arrangements. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) intends to return to the Chamber to press new clause 27 to a Division, but it is an important clause about governance arrangements and I hope she does. It is welcome that the Government have accepted the Procedure Committee’s amendments. There was much concern about the sweeping powers set out in clauses 7, 8 and 9, which, as many Members have said, would give Ministers excessively wide powers to make secondary legislation.”
“The Bill must also put stronger substantive limitations on the powers in the Bill itself, including a general limit, as in new clause 24, and specific limits to safeguard environmental standards, such as in amendment 96. It is only by carefully restricting the Government’s powers and effectively scrutinising their use can we prevent powers in the Bill from being used in ways that weaken environmental protections or threaten to roll back 40 years of environmental gains. The hon. Member for Wells (James Heappey) said that Greener UK praised the earlier debate on the environment. I think it was praise for the amendments tabled and the discussion rather than the end result, because the Government did not accept any of the amendments, but we will continue to push on those issues.”
“It should include options such as: requiring a Minister to provide further evidence and explanation for the statutory instrument; requiring a debate and vote on the Floor of the House; allowing a committee to be able to recommend amendments to a statutory instrument, which many Members have mentioned; and public consultation. My hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) talked about alerting Members to what is being brought forward before the House as a statutory instrument, because it is all too true that so many of them just pass unnoticed and we do not know what we are legislating on. Enhanced scrutiny alone is not enough. The power to make corrections in clause 7 is still too broad, too general and too vague. It needs to be improved and clarified.”
“They simply provide a mechanism for a committee to recommend that statutory instruments introduced under the Bill should be treated under the affirmative procedure rather than the negative procedure. The committee sits, but it does not scrutinise. Members may request a debate and a vote, but they cannot require a vote to take place. The White Paper said that MPs could require a debate, but that is simply not correct. The Hansard Society described that inaccuracy in the White Paper as ignorance at best, deception at worst. Members who have been in the House for some time will know that for an affirmative resolution to be objected to and end up in a proper debate is very rare. The tactic is used very infrequently. I believe we need a model that allows for enhanced scrutiny.”