My Lords, with the explicit kind invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Russell, I rise to provide an environmental perspective and broadly support Amendments 17 and 127. Since it is the first time I have spoken in Committee, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, to his new role. Given the range of subjects I cover, we have discussed many things before and we will have new subjects to cover. I also apologise to the Minister: I was aware of the long time that he devoted to consultation; like the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, however, transport interfered with my attendance. There is a lot of it around, I am afraid.
I will comment broadly on the amendments introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Frost, and others on this side of the Committee. I am not in favour of all those amendments. I suspect it will not surprise many people to hear that but I suggest respectfully to the noble Lord that he might be picking the wrong battlefield when it comes to tethered bottle tops. I am not sure that being the noble Lord in favour of litter is something that he would like to adopt, given that if you look, for example, at a marine conservation study from 2023, bottle tops were the third most littered item found on beaches. Indeed, the NGO Seas At Risk found it was the third most common plastic item in the seas, causing damage to wildlife. So I suggest a small, practical and sensible measure. If the noble Lord is finding it difficult to manage these new bottle tops, there is a TikToker whose handle is @andreilifehack. He has 8 million followers and a neat little trick of how to manage a tethered bottle top. I should be happy to share that link with the noble Lord.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Russell, I am going to take a moderate, practical approach to this. Picking up the point he made about the advantages to businesses, we particularly look at small and medium enterprises in the UK, which have suffered enormously and lost a huge amount of trade following Brexit. Regulatory confusion and uncertainty does not help them, whereas larger businesses may be able to cope. The certainty that his amendment could help to provide would be useful to those small and medium-sized enterprises.
Picking up on environmental health and, indeed, more broadly, the one-health aspect of this and being pragmatic—the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton,
focused on chemical regulation and as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, has amendments on that later in the Bill, I am not going to get into the detail of that now—harmful chemicals and industrial processes are damaging public health in the UK. We have huge problems. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, referred to the state of our rivers, then there is air pollution and the contamination levels in our food. All these things have big impacts on public as well as environmental health. Again being pragmatic and thinking about the fact that both the two largest parties in your Lordships’ House often reflect on the number of people who are not in employment because of ill health and who are not contributing to the economy as a result, taking steps to improve public health, and environmental health as part of that, is an extremely pragmatic step. As the noble Lord, Lord Browne, said, we are trailing significantly behind the EU in important areas of that.
I said I would be brief, so I will stop there because I have more to say on these areas in the next group.