My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 37 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock. I wish to say a few words about it and about the other amendments in this group, which I also support. First, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, that none of us in this Chamber doubts the commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, to environmental protection and supporting the cause that we all passionately believe in, and I congratulate him on his commitment to the environment.
However, we are nevertheless worried, for at least three reasons. First, not everybody in the Minister’s party necessarily shares his commitment to the environment. We all think back to a previous Tory Prime Minister, who referred to certain environmental protections as “green crap”. I am sorry if that offends noble Lords’ ears but those were the words that he was reported to have used. We are not sure that everybody will share that commitment.
We are also worried about the number of pieces of legislation that fall under Defra’s umbrella; the figure that I have been given is 1,781. That seems a bit of spurious precision given the earlier debate about the uncertainty in the number; although it was described as a catalogue, it is not actually a catalogue on the dashboard because it is incomplete. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has said, there is a lot of legislation that Defra has to deal with. Amendment 37 is just about a small sub-sample.
The third point that keeps our worry levels up is the continuing gap between rhetoric and reality. While a lot of warm words are said about environmental protection, the “greenest Government ever” and how we want to leave the environment in a better state than we found it, the reality is in many cases very different. Whether it is the quality of our rivers, sewage in other coastal zones, loss of biodiversity or air equality, in all those areas we are not doing as well on the ground as the rhetoric would lead us to believe. That was clearly brought home in the recent report of the Office for Environmental Protection, the watchdog that is meant to snap at the heels of government.
That is why we need some reassurance that environmental protections will not be lost down the back of the sofa. I will give a couple of examples. One— I thank Greener UK for it—concerns a current application for the Ashdown Business Park in Maresfield, at postcode TN22 2HN. It is on the edge of the Ashdown Forest special protection area and special area of conservation, so is an ecologically important area. The ecological impact assessment says that you would need an
appropriate assessment under the habitats directive and the habitats regulations. That is the kind of warning light for the development. However, under the heading of “Current Uncertainty Regarding Planning Applications”, the report goes on to refer to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, saying that, at the same time, the UK government is pressing ahead to remove and replace European Union law on the British statute under its planned retained EU law Bill, currently at the amendment stage within Parliament.
What we are seeing there is concrete evidence that the uncertainty created by the Bill is already having an effect on, potentially, the protection of key habitats in this country that are currently protected under the habitats directive and regulations. That is why it is really important that the Government say, “No, we are not going to change those; no, we are not going to get rid of them. You still have to follow them.”
My second example refers to the fact that environmental protections are not just about tree hugging, red kites and dormice; they are about human health, because our health is intimately connected with that of the environment. The air that we breathe, the water in our rivers and the pesticides that are used on our farms can all impact on our health. We are talking here not about just about the environment but about human health. I am sure that most if not all members of the public would be horrified to think that there was any risk of diluting protections to their health as a result of the Bill.
I want to mention one concrete example that I heard about this morning. I put it in the form of a question to the Minister. He may not be able to answer it today because it is a bit of a curveball, but he may be able to write to us. It concerns environmental noise. The World Health Organization estimates that in Europe 100 million people suffer ill health as a result of environmental noise, and 1 million healthy life years are lost as a result of exposure to environmental noise. I was told this morning that there are EU regulations that require member states to map environmental noise in their country, which we are doing. However, since we left the EU, there is now an additional requirement to map the health impacts of environmental noise, but because we have left we are apparently not doing that. I would like the Minister to confirm or deny that assertion which I heard this morning. That would be a small example of how, as we slide away from EU standards, there is a danger that we will lower our protections for the environment and, importantly, for human health at the same time.