I rise to support both amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. She asked the Minister two excellent questions: first, we have a chair for the animal welfare sentience committee, but when are we going to get the rest of the members? Will it be before Christmas? Her second excellent question was: when are we going to see the environmental principles policy statement, because we still have not got it? When the Secretary of State came before my committee a couple of weeks ago, there was the usual—how should one put it?—open-ended commitment to when it might come.
This is becoming a major issue in this House. It is not just an issue for this Bill, where there is a direct correlation between the duties that Ministers would have to follow if the environmental principles policy
statement was in place, but for every other piece of legislation that we are looking at. I see the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, in his place. We have been debating the issue of the Procurement Bill. Billions of pounds of government money is spent every year on procurement and, as it stands at the moment, there is no obligation on Ministers to take into account the targets that this Government say they want to deliver, because the EPPS is not in its place.
The reason I particularly want to pick up on this, rather than just to have a rant, is to say that it is not just a question of when the EPPS is laid. What is the Government’s thinking about the delay that they then wish to put in place between that and when the Ministers have to have due regard to it? They have said consistently that, once it is laid, the Government will allow a time for Ministers to prepare themselves to undertake these requirements to have regard to the environmental principles. So when are we going to get the draft EPPS? Are we going to get it before Christmas?
Secondly, have the Government come to a fixed view about the delay between once it is laid and when it will be binding on Ministers? If it is going to be more than a year before it is binding on Ministers, it is not just this Bill, the Procurement Bill and others, but a host of other Bills where the Government say they are committed to their environmental principles but there is no binding commitment on Ministers to have to account for that.