UK Parliament / Open data

Environment Bill

Proceeding contribution from Rebecca Pow (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Wednesday, 20 October 2021. It occurred during Debate on bills on Environment Bill.

I thank the hon. Lady and take her point, but we have to work with other Governments to bring forward our legislation. Many of these countries—Brazil is a specific example—have protections but, in many cases, are not upholding them. This Bill will have an effect, if we can demonstrate that they are not upholding their protections and our products are coming from there. That all has to be in a transparent survey, and data has to be recorded by businesses, so the onus will actually also be on them, because they do not want to be seen to be selling products that are causing deforestation. We have worked extremely hard to get that provision into the Bill and we believe that it will help to make a difference on this issue.

Given the pioneering nature of the policy, we have included a statutory requirement for a review every two years to make sure that the policy is delivering as intended and that the things that are happening, exactly as the hon. Lady suggests, do not happen. However, conducting a review after just one year of the requirements coming into force, as the amendments require, does not provide sufficient time to understand the policy’s effectiveness.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
701 c846 
Session
2021-22
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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