My Lords, I was moved to put down this amendment by a report that appeared in the Times on Saturday 14 January, an extract of which I will read in a moment. The proposed new clause says:
“The nominated undertaker has a duty to take reasonable and cost effective steps to deal appropriately with protected species”.
My concern is as much with the reasonable steps as it is with the protected species. The article in the Times, under the by-line of Mr Ben Webster, the environment editor, says:
“The biggest badger relocation project yet attempted is about to get under way along the route of HS2, the high-speed rail line.
More than a thousand badgers in a hundred local populations will be affected by phase one of the line, from London to Birmingham. They will either be moved to new artificial setts or protected from the impact of the line by tunnels dug beneath it. The multimillion-pound publicly funded operation comes weeks after the government said that 11,000 badgers were shot last year to protect cattle from tuberculosis”.
My first question is whether the Minister can guarantee that saving badgers from the shovels and bulldozers of the high-speed train will not risk them falling under the guns of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—that would be an odd way to spend millions of pounds. After all, I understand that licences have already been granted to cull badgers in no fewer than 10 areas in Cornwall. Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Somerset. Can the Minister assure us that none of these displaced badgers will be moved to these areas where they will be gunned down by another department? That would not be the best example of joined-up government I have ever seen.
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The report goes on to say, bizarrely:
“The new setts, each costing about £5,000, will consist of a series of pipes and chambers buried under mounds of earth … Once the setts are built, HS2 will have to entice the badgers to move into their new homes”.
Paraphrasing the report, disturbing badgers is evidently an offence under the existing wildlife Acts, so they have to be enticed. The Minister is a persuasive fellow, but could he tell the House what form this enticement will take? It does not sound like the easiest of projects, though given his talents I am sure he will be able to tell us. In its concern for badgers, the report goes on to say:
“Badger tunnels will be built under roads used by the thousands of lorries involved in construction of the line”.
I note that the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, is in her place; in the light of an earlier amendment, those “thousands of lorries” ought to cause some disturbance. It continues:
“The spokesman said that badgers were by far the biggest wildlife issue for HS2”.
But it is not just badgers. The report further states:
“The line will also disturb protected great crested newts and bats”.
Noble Lords will forgive me if I tell them that I am a bit of an expert on great crested newts. I have never seen one, but I have served on no fewer than three hybrid Bill committees during my 40 years in both Houses of Parliament. On each of them there was lots of concern about great crested newts. Has the Minister ever seen one? If they are that prevalent, there cannot be any great need to protect them in the way that we do. Yet we are about to spend “multimillions” on badgers. How many millions are we to spend on great crested newts? Perhaps the Minister can tell us.
I also give way to no Member of your Lordships’ House in my concern for bats, but why is it that every time we want to reopen a railway tunnel somebody points out that there are bats in there? It is remarkable how they seem to follow the railway closures of the Beeching era. If we are to protect the taxpayer, as well as these species, the Minister owes the House an explanation of how these things are to be done. I beg to move.