The first day of committee saw Jenny supporting all the tabled amendments in an effort to improve this bill…
Continue reading “High Speed Rail (West Midlands-Crewe) Bill Committee Stage day 1”
Category: Ecology and animal protection
People need wild spaces and green spaces and other species need them too. Sharing our world with other species is part of the joy of being alive, when we cage and abuse them, or destroy their habitat, we demean ourselves in the process
Jenny works to increase green spaces and protect animals and wild space
Read on to see her latest posts on this these topics
Victory on Agriculture Bill
The Lords voted to keep food standards and protect family farms by amending the Agriculture Bill on Tuesday. The government managed to unite the National Farmers Union, consumer organisations, supermarkets and greens in lobbying for the Lords to defeat the government by 307/212. It was one of six government defeats in the Lords on what used to be considered rural, home turf for the Conservative Party. Continue reading “Victory on Agriculture Bill”
Live Animal Exports and the Agriculture Bill
The Brexit campaign promised an end to live exports and we must amend the Government’s Agriculture Bill to force them to deliver.
Continue reading “Live Animal Exports and the Agriculture Bill”
Positive response from the Government on Buffer Zones
Buffer zones along waterways are a robust measure to limit pollution by run off from farm land AND they provide wildlife corridors to help species move around.
Continue reading “Positive response from the Government on Buffer Zones”
Our Agriculture Bill Amendments
This Agriculture Bill will shape how our countryside looks for the next generation. It will change the way money is spent on food and land management as the £20 billions of subsidies that flowed through the European Union’s (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are replaced by a new system. We do not support this bill, but we are doing our best to make some good of it. We are attempting to insert new clauses and substantial amendments, as well as co-signing a number of important amendments from other peers. The wording of our clauses and amendments are detailed below in topic groupings.
Fishing limits – it’s everything obvious about human survival
The Fishing Bill is going through Parliament and I despair for common sense. The most basic rule of human survival on a finite planet is don’t take more than nature can provide. Yet, there are no binding legal commitments not to fish above scientifically recommended sustainable levels. As it stands the Fisheries Bill breaks the Conservative Manifesto promise to “a legal commitment to fish sustainably”. It also appears that that Ministers have no intention of keeping the legal commitment set out in Article 2 of the Community Fisheries Policy to set catch limits at maximum sustainable yield (MSY) by 2020. Continue reading “Fishing limits – it’s everything obvious about human survival”
Withdrawal Bill needs to include scrutiny for any backwards steps on the environment
With all the Henry the Eighth powers, secondary legislation making powers, and judicial erasure powers that Parliament will have handed to the Government in the Withdrawal Bill and other Brexit legislation, Ministers are going to find themselves with an unprecedented ability to rewrite enormous aspects of UK law at will. The Commons will be effectively by-passed and the Lords may feel compelled to wave it all through, as happens with almost every piece of secondary legislation. For this reason, it is so important that we put a backstop into law now, to protect environmental, food safety and animal welfare standards. Continue reading “Withdrawal Bill needs to include scrutiny for any backwards steps on the environment”
Future Generations Bill introduced
Today, I am introducing the Future Generations Bill on behalf of independent peer, John Bird (founder of Big Issue). This Bill aims to look after the interests of the very young and those not yet born. In the words of John Bird, the world of tomorrow should: “… not simply be an accumulation of the half-arsed hopes and the short-term governmental thinking of days gone by.”
Green tests for the Environment Bill
Boris Johnson has written an article in The Times describing the Environment Bill which will be in the Queen’s Speech on Monday. As a quick measure of how green this Environment Bill really is, here are five policies that it must include: Continue reading “Green tests for the Environment Bill”
Green New Deal, Agriculture and Fisheries
It is no longer hyperbole to state that our planet is facing multiple existential threats. It was the conclusion, and consensus, of international scientists laid out in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report late last year. And it is bolstered by the UN’s terrifying new report by the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. The conclusions can be summarised in a simple truth: humanity has caused mass extinctions and we are destroying the natural systems on which we all depend. It isn’t too late to change course – but we cannot delay a moment longer. Continue reading “Green New Deal, Agriculture and Fisheries”
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 