---

Local Government and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

This seems to have been a very long debate—and when I look at the clock I realise that that it has indeed been a very long debate. It seems a long time ago that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government stood up to make what I thought a sadly partisan speech; it was as though she was still addressing the Labour party conference, and had not yet found her way into her new role and learnt what it takes to be a Secretary of State. It also seems a long time ago that my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) made his witty, trenchant and very well-informed contribution. Only under questioning and pressure from Labour Members did he feel it necessary to expose the hypocrisy and incompetence that lie behind the Government's plans for housing, and the lack of democratic accountability in their proposals to reform the planning system—issues about which my hon. Friends the Members for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) and for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) both spoke with a great deal of local knowledge and considerable authority. We heard a wonderful contribution from the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). I will check Hansard tomorrow, but I think she said that in future her constituency would be a sparkling and happy place. It is lovely to see her lighting up her place at the end of the Bench with such happy regularity. In a powerful speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) spoke, also from experience, of the problems and pressures faced by his local authorities and police as a result of various factors. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) made a thoughtful and well-informed speech about immigration. I know it is invidious to keep singling people out, but I thought that the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford)—despite having been slapped down in the most brutal way when he intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett)—made a particularly thoughtful speech about the empowerment of local communities, an agenda that the Conservatives strongly support. No fewer than 12 hon. Members devoted most of their comments to the Climate Change Bill, and we heard some extremely useful contributions. The hon. Member for Copeland (Mr. Reed), who is not in the Chamber now, struck a slightly different note in focusing on nuclear power, which raised a number of eyebrows among his hon. Friends. In the process, he also managed to misrepresent the views of Her Majesty's Opposition on the subject. No doubt we shall have a full and through discussion of the issue when we debate the energy Bill. I assume that we shall have a Second Reading debate on the Climate Change Bill at some point in the not too distant future, but perhaps the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will let us know whether he intends the Bill to be introduced in another place. A rumour is circulating to that effect. As there may be further time for us to debate climate change issues before Second Reading, I do not intend to devote a great deal of time to the content of the Bill, save to say that we strongly welcome it. As we campaigned for it, it would have been rather churlish of us not to welcome it now that the Government have introduced it. As Members in all parts of the House have pointed out, there are issues in the Bill which will need to be resolved. There are also areas that will need to be tightened up, and we think we can secure cross-party consensus on that. Above all, all decisions relating to climate change must be based securely on the best science available at the time. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar, I must ask the Secretary of State to introduce the marine Bill at the earliest possible opportunity. It is a great disappointment that it is still lurking in the small print as a draft when it should be out in the open, heading towards the statute book. We look forward to that happening, and to debating it and making constructive contributions when we are afforded the opportunity to do so. This debate gives us a chance both to look forward to the Government's programme and to look back a bit and review the performance of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs over the past year. I have said before that the Secretary of State is a very decent man—he is widely recognised as such—but the Department he took over not so long ago is far from decent; indeed, it is not fit for purpose, to borrow a phrase Labour Members might recognise. It is also a Department where events happen: foot and mouth disease, bluetongue, avian influenza and floods. I gather via a message from the Secretary of State this afternoon that there are currently severe flood risks in the East Anglia region, and the Environment Agency is warning of flood surges. If the Secretary of State has any update on that, I am sure that the House would be delighted to be kept informed. The problem with the Secretary of State's position is that DEFRA is a failing Department. It matters when Government Departments fail, because their failure impacts on individuals, communities and businesses. However, when a Department with DEFRA's responsibilities is failing, that also has profound implications for the environment, biodiversity and the natural world. The other problem with that failure is that the Department then finds it hard to carry clout in policy areas outside its immediate remit but over which it is notionally meant to have influence or responsibility. I do not want to labour the point about foot and mouth disease, but let us take a quick look at what happened over the past year. If anyone thinks that, just because the media have moved on a bit from the issues around Pirbright and the release of foot and mouth virus from a Government-licensed laboratory, the issue is done and dusted, they are sadly mistaken. The pain and economic hardship and the sense of betrayal are still very much alive, not only in the immediate Surrey and Berkshire areas, but across the country. Although we welcome the fact that this time, unlike what happened in 2001, the Department acted relatively quickly to contain the disease, basic competence after an event of that kind is not commonly a cause for general rejoicing. We welcome the recent easing of movement restrictions and the promise of the resumption of exports, but the latest export arrangements, which were announced yesterday, have been greeted with considerable concern in the south-east. It is unfortunate, as I think the Secretary of State would acknowledge, that the announcement of those changes was made by press release rather than by written statements to this House. I am sure he will reflect on that, and on his promise to keep the House fully informed of all changes as they occur. What really irks people, however, is that nobody seems willing to take responsibility for the leak of foot and mouth virus from a Government-regulated laboratory. That reinforces the opinion that this Government are all too quick to blame and punish others for errors and omissions, but are never willing to take responsibility for their own mistakes. The fact is that if DEFRA had been a farm or a food business, it would have been closed down. The foot and mouth issue is symptomatic of a wider problem faced by the Secretary of State in his new job. Nobody trusts his Department any longer. In the year since the last Gracious Speech, rural businesses have suffered continuing difficulties as a result of the ongoing shambles at the Rural Payments Agency. In March the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee published a report on the way in which the single farm payment system had been implemented. It described it variously as"““A catastrophe for farmers…A serious and embarrassing failure for DEFRA…A reputational disaster for DEFRA””" and"““evidence that the Government does not seem to be learning the lessons of previous failures.””" On top of the financial losses to farmers, totalling some £225 million, the taxpayer has had to foot the bill for cost overruns of £50 million and is faced with the prospect of EU fines amounting to £348 million. You can see, Mr. Deputy Speaker, why I suggest that DEFRA is a failing Department. As I said, if it were a business it would have been closed down. Then there is bovine tuberculosis. There have been endless consultations over many years, and still we have not seen any action. Perhaps it is a recognition of the Department's inability to run things properly that it spends so much money employing other people to do things instead. I suppose that we should welcome the fact that at least one sector of the business community is doing very well indeed out of DEFRA: the Department has managed to spend £1.1 billion on consultants in the last five years. Last year alone, it spent £290 million. It is probably worth observing that that is 23 times more than it has offered in compensation to farmers for its own release of foot and mouth into the environment. So while people in rural communities have been struggling with mounting levels of bureaucracy, the consequences of the Government's incompetence, declining services, closing post offices and the rest of it, DEFRA has been making consultants very rich indeed. DEFRA has overall responsibility for the Government's efforts to tackle climate change, and we look forward to debating the Climate Change Bill, but it already has an Office of Climate Change, which was set up in September 2006. A DEFRA news release stated:"““Office of Climate Change starts work. The Office of Climate Change…will work across Government to provide a shared resource for analysis and development of climate change policy and strategy.””" The Secretary of State's predecessor is quoted as saying:"““The Office will co-ordinate climate change activity across Government based on sound, objective analysis and drive forward progress on climate change policy and strategy.””" Can the Secretary of State tell us whether the OCC has co-ordinated with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform over the efforts that its Secretary of State has been making to undermine the Government's stated support for the EU initiative to generate 20 per cent. of energy from renewable sources by 2020—the point admirably raised by the hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell (Colin Challen)? Was the OCC co-ordinating with DBERR over the total shambles that has overtaken the system of grant support for micro-power installations? That shambles has resulted in a collapse in the number of grant applications in the past year. Has the OCC been co-ordinating with the Department for Communities and Local Government over its attempts to weaken the Merton rule—an admirable local initiative that requires all new developments over a certain size to source at least 10 per cent. of their energy from renewable supplies? Some 140 councils have been following the Merton example. Only last June, the Minister for Housing, whom I see is no longer present, was enthusiastic and waxed lyrical about it. She said that was ““essential that all authorities”” should follow the example of Merton. However, after lobbying by the ever-unambitious house-building sector, whose instinct is always to rush straight to the lowest common denominator, the latest draft climate change planning policy statement discourages councils from making the Merton rule a requirement at all. Has the OCC been co-ordinating with the Department for Transport over the terms of the renewable transport fuel obligation? We are all in favour of sustainable biofuels, but the absence of any sustainable criteria attached to that new obligation is a recipe for disaster. Of course, the market will go straight to the cheapest source, which is likely to be imports, grown at the expense of the rain forest. To say that that is counter-productive is a serious understatement. Has the OCC been co-ordinating and liaising with the Department for Transport over proposed changes to the planning system specifically designed to make it easier to build airports and expand airport capacity, at a time when aviation emissions are the fastest growing source of climate change gases? Has the OCC been co-ordinating with the Treasury over the management of the £20 million allocated in last year's Budget to"““help local authorities and others work in partnership with energy companies to promote and incentivise energy efficiency measures to households””?" If it has, it has not had much influence. The budget has been allocated elsewhere and has now been cut because of financial difficulties at DEFRA, with which we are sadly all too familiar. The Prime Minister says that he is all about change, but this Government programme simply gives us more of the same. It provides more top-down, bossy Government, more quangos and more central plans that will not work. He has brought a change in one respect, but it is not for the better. Whereas his predecessor at least got fired up by the threat of climate change, people are increasingly saying that the present Prime Minister just does not get it. Whether the Climate Change Bill will emerge as a true catalyst for change remains to be seen. We hope that it will. DEFRA seems no longer to be trusted by other Departments, and seems to have long ago lost the trust of the people whom it is there to serve. Restoring that trust is the biggest challenge that we face, and the biggest change that is needed—and in order to do that, we need to change the Government.