I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish an independent regulatory body to monitor and enforce the compliance of public bodies with climate and environmental requirements and targets; to make provision for associated sanctions; to require the regulatory body to assess the environmental effects of potential trade agreements; to make provision about environmental standards, including in relation to animal welfare; and for connected purposes.
I am introducing the Bill because the UK is without meaningful environmental regulation and without any kind of independent environmental regulator. Having left the EU and having promised four years ago to introduce legislation to provide the UK with its own independent regulator, the Government continue to fail to meet that promise. Unregulated and unpoliced, our standards of biodiversity, air quality and animal welfare need to be protected or the Government will allow them to be eroded.
Politicians on all sides have a habit of saying that British farming is the best in the world. That claim happens to be true, but I fear that the Conservative Government do not understand why it is true. We can protect British farming only if we understand it. I am compelled to introduce the Bill, because the Government do not seem to understand it and do not seem to get it.
British farming is the best in the world, mainly for two fundamental reasons: standards and culture: standards, because we have led the development of the world’s most ambitious and comprehensive system of agricultural and environmental regulation alongside our partners on the continent; and culture, because the unit of farming in Britain is the family farm, which has underpinned our reputation for unrivalled care and compassion for livestock, and for a ratio of humans to animals that allows the welfare of those animals to be a priority. Furthermore, the culture of Britain’s family farms is one in which they are not just proud to produce our food but proud to be the stewards of our countryside and environment, to be on the frontline of the fight against climate change and the fight to restore nature. If we lose our world-class regulation and have no effective regulator, and if we allow family farms to be undercut and go to the wall, we fatally undermine British farming and all that is good about it. It is not acceptable for the Government to promise regulation and a regulator, and continually to break that promise, while our farmers are put under increasing pressure and our environment is put at increased risk.
That is why, along with my Liberal Democrat and Alliance colleagues, I am pushing the Bill. There is an urgent need for safeguards to be put in place. We need a regulator that is well resourced, has comprehensive and strong powers, and is completely independent of Government so that it can set and enforce regulation without fear or favour, and have the strength to hold public authorities at all levels to account. We need much more than a body that just points out where the Government are failing. We need an office that can force the Government to comply; an office that can prosecute, and can levy fines and other sanctions to prevent abuse; a watchdog whose bite is as great as its bark. Without powerful, independent regulation or a regulator, we will begin to see more complexities in bureaucracy as food producers seek to comply with traditional, high-quality British standards but simultaneously have to operate with lower production costs as they battle to avoid being undercut by cheap imports.