Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, my Amendments 35 and 40 follow on neatly from the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. As I mentioned at Second Reading, there is no doubt that the gene editing of animals will allow us to do some real good in the animal kingdom, in a way that would otherwise take decades of trial and error, through random mutations and with hundreds of field experiments having to be...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: The comment I would make is that I am asking for long-term surveillance of the results of gene editing, in the same way that we should have had long-term surveillance of the random mutations in the ordinary, traditional basic breeding that goes on at the moment. To pick up on what the noble Lord seemed to be hinting at a few minutes ago in some of his remarks, I do not think anyone is...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, surely the whole point of this Bill is to speed up the process of bringing into being the plants and animals that the world really needs, as a matter of some urgency, to prevent our populations at home and abroad—I mentioned lots of examples in sub-Saharan Africa at Second Reading—starving, and to avoid further destroying our planet. We hope that our scientists will be able to...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I realise that these are mostly probing amendments and, as ever, we await the Minister’s remarks with bated breath. But I cannot let the proposal to exclude all animals pass without comment because, like my noble friend Lord Trees, I believe that if we were to exclude all animals from the Bill, it would be an opportunity wasted to enable us to remove a lot of suffering on their...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I support Amendment 31. First, for the purposes of this Committee, I declare my interests: I am still involved in a family farming enterprise, growing crops and rearing livestock; I chair the board of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology; and I am the president of the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers. Amendment 31 is similar to the two amendments that I put down in a...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, it is a great honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lilley. I do not suppose anyone in this House will be surprised to know that I support the Bill and everything it is trying to achieve. Some of your Lordships will remember that I moved the amendment to the Agriculture Bill that resulted in the consultation that has brought us to this point. I declare my relevant interests. I am...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: To ask His Majesty's Government when they will respond to the Policy design features for the car and van zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate consultation, which ran from 7 April to 10 June.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, given the current reluctance of farmers to alter their normal cropping to pick up on ELMS, would it not be a good idea for the Government to find a way to sponsor additional FWAG officers, and particularly to train those FWAG officers in the field? Those last three words are the important ones because it is all very well learning in a classroom, but FWAG officers are enormously...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, like others, I look forward to the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford, which follows this speech. Like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, I want to talk about the levelling up of rural England, its economy and its communities. In many ways, I am firing his second barrel for him, but I assure noble Lords that there was no collusion...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they intend to take, if any, to meet the Fisheries Act 2020 ecosystem objective, particularly the monitoring and mitigation of sensitive species by catch, in the absence of substantial observer coverage and Remote Electronic Monitoring onboard English fishing vessels.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the delay to building new houses caused by uncertainty about how to mitigate against the production of phosphate and nitrate nutrients; and what steps they are taking, if any, to tackle this issue.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: To ask Her Majesty's Government why they have increased hydropower licence fees for run-of-river schemes by 895 per cent since 2016; and how this aligns with their ambition to generate more renewable energy.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, it appears that there has been some sort of rapprochement—albeit, I suspect, reluctant. On the one hand are us, from all sides of the House of Lords, who wish to see a strong and independent OEP; on the other side is the current Defra team, which still, I get the impression, wishes to guide its activities as far as is politically possible. It would appear that we are gradually...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, as someone who spoke passionately about the independence of the OEP at earlier stages of the Bill, I support my noble friend Lord Krebs in his amendment. The OEP will be at the centre of our country’s new environmental future: post Brexit, post COP 26 and post COP 15. The world is changing fast, and I am pleased to say that, as the Minister mentioned earlier, we are slowly waking...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 7 at the end of July, before the Government’s Amendment 6 was tabled and was public knowledge, because I think species abundance really matters. I am one of those, perhaps because I am a countryman, who gets worried about the state of our biodiversity. I worry that the CBD and COP 15 are almost never heard of in the press and in public, compared with COP...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I support this amendment very strongly. First, I declare my interests—for the whole of Report—as a farmer and landowner, as chair of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and as chair of an internet parking business. For too long, in this country and elsewhere, we have ignored the importance of the 1 billion bacteria that should exist in every teaspoonful of our top-soil. We...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 280 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. This is a very interesting area and it is important that we continue to carefully research the impact of individual wind farms, as well as—perhaps more importantly, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned—their cumulative effect on many species, from benthic...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Devon and his forensic legal approach to these issues. In this case, I am highly persuaded by his arguments. Fifteen minutes ago, I had relatively few doubts about this chapter on conservation covenants, but now I seem to have loads of them. I should also say that this is my first appearance in this Chamber since March 2020, and...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, I apologise in advance since I shall probably speak for too long on this group, but many of the amendments are either in my name or of interest to me. My Amendments 188A, 188B and 188C really speak for themselves. To some extent they are probing amendments. The question of water quality, how such quality is defined in relation to current and future possible pollutants and how these...
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, particularly as I agree with a lot of what he had to say, although, as he will see a minute, I come to some slightly different conclusions. Where I agree with him is that this is a tricky problem, and I speak as a farmer who grows and irrigates potatoes—or at least my son now does. I am aware that you can hardly sell...
