It is useful to see just how far the Government will go in trying to block all these common-sense amendments. Lord Krebs pointed out that this was meant to be a non-regression Bill but when the Minister said that, I choked, because it is so patently untrue.
Continue reading “If it is bad for the environment, it is probably not a good idea to do it”
Today, I’m asking a Minister if breaking the law with a car attracts a lighter sentence than if someone does the same in any other area of their life?
Many years ago a police traffic sergeant told me that the best way to murder someone is to do it with a car. A hit and run carries a fairly minimum sentence and even if caught you can always claim that “accidents happen.”
The reality of this was brought home to me in 2014 when a man travelling at 80-88mph drove straight at the traffic officer who stepped out to flag his vehicle down for speeding. The killer made no attempt to stop as he threw PC Duncan into the air ‘like a rag doll’ and left him with fatal injuries. The starting point for murdering a police officer with a knife, or iron bar is 30 years, this driver received an eight and a half year sentence.
Continue reading “Lawless roads and motorists getting off lightly”
I have worked the issue of air pollution on since 2001. The sources of air pollution are widespread: industry, transport, buildings and agriculture are all major contributors. We have to understand how each of those can be cleaned up and improved, not just for all of us who breathe it in in the cities, but for farmers who also experience a huge amount of pollution in their daily lives.
Air pollution has been found to cause death after a coroner ruled it was a cause of death for Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah. The coroner in Ella’s case said that “there is no safe level for Particulate Matter” in air and recommended a reduction in the national pollution limits to bring them into line with World Health Organization guidelines, which is exactly what my Amendment 29 would do. Continue reading “Environment Bill: My air pollution amendment”
I suspect that not very far in the future, we will think of plastic as the new asbestos. We have known for a long time that plastic takes hundreds of thousands of years to break down, but only recently we have understood how bad that is. Plastic only breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces; it does not actually ever go away. We now see that microplastics are present almost everywhere, including in our own bodies. Plastics accumulate in the food that we eat, moving up the food chain until it reaches its highest concentration in our bodies and, most concerningly, in mothers’ breast milk. When microplastics get very small, they are referred to as nanoplastics. They are so small that they can cross cellular membranes and actually work their way into our individual cells. We are currently clueless about what that means for our health and the environment.
Continue reading “Environment Bill Day 2 – Plastic: the new asbestos”
Farming accounts for 12% of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK. Changing the way we use our land is critical to delivering the UK’s Net Zero target. It is time for the Government to start facing up to this reality. The Prime Minister should use his political capital to begin this conversation and start this road to a more sustainable diet. I would like to set him a challenge: persuading the public that modifying our diets is an important step towards net zero. Continue reading “Environment Bill – the reduction of meat and dairy consumption”
This is not just about chemicals that we should not drink going in; that is only a tiny part of the picture. The River Thames floods with human sewage multiple times a week and also has some of the highest recorded levels of microplastics in the world. It is long overdue for the Government to get a grip on water pollution.
Sewage and water companies make a lot of money and they should be clearing up their own mess. If they cannot take on these contracts, they should not take them on. When it comes to cost, we should look at the businesses that make money out of our rivers and our sewage, and we should make them pay. Continue reading “Environment Bill: Water pollution amendment”
Today I ask whether the government will ensure that the police have a ‘duty of candour’.
One of the main recommendations that came out of the recent report on the murder of Daniel Morgan is that the police should have a “duty of candour”. It seems such a simple and inoffensive change to how the police conduct themselves, but it would generate a flow of fresh air and transparency through the suffocating fog of the UK’s policing culture. The Daniel Morgan case is the most documented example of institutional corruption within the police, but is only one of many going back over several decades.
What is the Government doing to encourage flat owners to do the right thing and allow pets?
Well done Caroline Lucas MP and campaigners for hassling the government into a recent change of heart on supporting fossil fuel projects abroad. Shame it took so long.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 