Extracts from Commons debate on the Queen's Speech - Jan 15

Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con):...Those three points are of particular interest to us in Romsey and Southampton North, and now I come to the niche comments that I wish to make. Members may have heard me raise with the Prime Minister last week the fact that US company Wheelabrator is planning to build, under national infrastructure rules, a giant incinerator in my constituency to burn commercial waste, between the beautiful, picturesque Test Valley villages of Longparish and Barton Stacey. Notionally, it will generate energy from waste, but it is in fact many miles from any connection to the national grid, and significantly, it is not close to a demand for that energy. It is within a few miles of an area of outstanding natural beauty and the South Downs national park. It is proposed to be twice the size of Winchester cathedral, but, of course, devoid of any of the architectural merit of that building. It will be in excess of 40 metres high, with chimneys that are 80 metres high. The plan is to locate it adjacent to the River Dever, which is known the world over for its fantastic fly fishing and is a tributary of the River Test. The incinerator will be situated above the aquifer and will be pumping pollution into the atmosphere, putting the biodiversity of this precious area at risk...

Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab):...The OEP will not be truly independent and will lack the power to hold the Government to account. In the previous Parliament, I sat on both the Environmental Audit Committee and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, which undertook pre-legislative scrutiny. Both Committees made that point. There is also no commitment to non-regression. When we should be seeking constant improvement, we can do better than our current standards. We certainly should not be going backwards. National infrastructure projects will not be subject to biodiversity net gain. Increasingly, net gain is looking like net parity. Again, we should be seeking improvements and not trying to just hold things as they are. The National Trust is particularly concerned that the historic environment has been excluded, even though the 25-year environment plan put it on a level playing field with the natural environment. There is no commitment to a national tree strategy, which is a crucial nature-based solution. While I am here, I would also make a plea for us to restore our peat lands. They can be an incredible carbon sink, but if we allow grouse moor owners to set fire to them, the environmental degradation that goes with that releases a huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere. We need action on that...

...We need a long-term financial commitment, which farmers have been asking for, on delivering public goods to be set out in the Bill. The Government have now ring-fenced the overall farm funding budget for the next five years, but there is still no indication as to how it will be divided up. Based on independent analysis by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the National Trust and the Wildlife Trust, at least £2.9 billion is needed for the new environment land management schemes. The Bill is also missing a duty on the Government to routinely assess the scale of financial need and a strong baseline of regulations for land managers to adhere to...

Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD):...Bus services are essential to life for rural communities such as ours. They are also key to Cumbria’s vibrant tourism industry. No one could or would deny that the Lake District and the surrounding communities are utterly awesome. It is a national treasure and a source of joy to many more than just those of us who are privileged enough to live among those lakes, mountains and dales.

Cumbria’s Lake District is Britain’s biggest visitor destination outside London. Some 16 million people visited us last year alone, but 83% of tourists travel to us by car. However, we know that, with the right interventions and conditions, our visitors will travel sustainably. Public bus transport is a key component of that, alongside rail, boats, bikes and, of course, walking in the hills. Improved bus services could alleviate pressure on the roads that become clogged with the cars of those visiting.

The Government keep ignoring the plight of rural communities. A so-called green industrial revolution in London or Manchester simply will not do. We would love it if they stopped ignoring us, and instead commission a truly ambitious and comprehensive rural bus service to exceed anything that we have seen before, even 35 years ago before the deregulation which started to decline. It will be an investment not only that revives rural communities and sees a huge reduction in the use of cars locally, but that boosts our economy and increases access to jobs.

My proposal today is that the Minister should ensure the direct commissioning through Transport for the North of a comprehensive, affordable, reliable rural bus network in Cumbria—a network that will be a substantial step towards ensuring that the northern powerhouse actually serves the rural north.

Finally, if our efforts to tackle climate change are going to come anywhere near something that could be classified as a revolution, we need to transform public transport interconnection and that connection between buses and trains. The main public transport route to the Lake District is the Lakes line. Back in 2017, the Government cancelled the planned electrification of the Lakes line on the basis of a massive and flawed overestimation of the project costs. This was and remains a huge let-down for communities around the lakes, and yet electrification of the Lakes line is the easiest electrification project in the country. The 12-mile route carries hundreds of thousands of passengers each year, but it could carry four times as many if we introduced a passing loop at Burneside so that we could run a half-hourly service, and if it were electrified, it would significantly reduce its carbon emissions...

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