Sue Miller

My Lords, I warmly thank those who have spoken in this debate tonight. I thought that the quote from the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, was incredibly apposite and absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that there are some very complex issues around houses that stand empty. However, I come back to the initial issue-someone's home, or the home they intend to live in, is protected, as it is a criminal offence for a squatter to be in it. I still feel that the Minister's reply did not sufficiently recognise that issue, but we will not get to the root of that this evening. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, gave us a real-life example, which pointed up exactly what we should be concerned about here.

Some of the things that I hope I will be able to discuss with the Minister and his department-which I know my noble friend is also concerned about-include the practicalities if the Government bring this in, such as the costs. Given the estimate of between 20,000 and 50,000 people squatting, what are the practicalities for local authorities being able to suddenly rehouse those sorts of numbers? The Minister said that this was about sending a clear message. I would just like to leave the Committee this evening with this thought; there are many ways of sending a message, and government guidance is a very good start. That is where the Government were in 2011, as I mentioned, and is something to build on. There is a lot to discuss between now and Report and I shall certainly bring this issue back. I welcome the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, that we might discuss the wording of a more appealing amendment. I am sure we will debate this again, hopefully at a better hour of the day. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 188 withdrawn.

Amendment 188A

Moved by Lord McNally

188A: Clause 130, page 112, line 15, at end insert-

"( ) In section 17 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (entry for purpose of arrest etc)-

(a) in subsection (1)(c), after sub-paragraph (v) insert-

"(vi) section 130 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (squatting in a residential building);";

(b) in subsection (3), for "or (iv)" substitute ", (iv) or (vi)".

( ) In Schedule 10 to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (consequential amendments), omit paragraph 53(b)."

My Lords, I realise the hour, but I will need to detain the Committee for some time on this clause because it is very serious and seeks to criminalise a large group of people. It was not debated in Committee in the other place, so I feel that this House needs to give it its full scrutiny. I am very pleased that so many of your Lordships are still in their places at this time of night to debate this issue. I have tabled this amendment and given notice of my intention to oppose the Question that this clause stand part of the Bill because I think the Committee will need to question very deeply the Government's claim that they need to criminalise the vulnerable homeless who are seeking shelter.

Let me say at the outset that I-like all noble Lords, I am sure-feel that a home should be sacrosanct and that any violation of it is totally unacceptable. An Englishman's or Englishwoman's home may not be a castle, but it should be so in law, and so it is. Despite the many misconceptions peddled by the press and others, it is already a criminal offence to squat in someone's home. The instances of squatters trying to establish themselves in someone's home are minuscule, but when it happens homeowners can be quite clear that they can ask the person or people to leave, and should that not happen immediately they should call the police. The police should remove the squatters and deal with the matter as a criminal offence. The same applies to a home that has been bought into which someone is intending to move. In both cases, the property owner is protected by Section 7 of the Criminal Law Act 1977, which was updated by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. It is already a criminal offence to refuse when asked to leave someone's home or a house that they are about to move into, to cause criminal damage either to gain entry or once inside the property, and to use utilities without paying for them. The police have a clear duty to enforce that. That is just to be absolutely clear. When the Minister began to speak to this amendment, he implied that the law was not sufficient in this case, and my first question to him is: why do the Government think that?

My amendment is suggested by the charity Crisis. Its purpose is to probe whether it might be better to extend what is covered by Section 7. The amendment proposes that anyone squatting in a house that has been empty for more than six months-not anyone's home, but a house that has been empty-and where there have been no material steps to bring it back into use would not be committing a criminal offence. What we need more clarity about are empty houses-not homes, but empty houses; for example, because they are going to be redeveloped or because someone has bought them and is waiting for the property market to pick up. It would be better to debate the link between homelessness and empty houses in the context of a housing Bill. I am sure the Minister has read the Crisis report of September 2011, Squatting: A Homelessness Issue, which urges that squatting should be discussed in the context of housing, homelessness and welfare.

Crisis commissioned independent research that shows that 41 per cent of homeless squatters report mental health needs; 34 per cent have been in care; 42 per cent suffer physical ill health or a disability; 47 per cent have experienced drug dependency; 21 per cent self-harm; and 15 per cent have a learning disability. On all these measures, homeless squatters are more vulnerable than the single homeless population as a whole, and 90 per cent of homeless squatters have also slept rough.

These are the people whom the Government are seeking to criminalise. I submit that criminalisation will not solve the problems faced by either these homeless individuals or by our society as a whole, which has a housing crisis, with over 600,000 people homeless and 350,000 empty properties-which is, as George Clarke graphically described in his Channel 4 series "The Great British Property Scandal", equivalent to a city the size of Leeds.

To have a rational debate about squatting and empty properties, we need to debunk some of the myths. The Crisis report makes plain that there are a lot of myths around squatting; for example, that of the eastern European squatting gangs invading people's homes, which, according to the Met policeman responsible for squatting policy, does not happen. What we are dealing with are people who, for whatever reason, have lost their home and are on a route back to housing.

Of course there are a few who choose to squat as a political statement, the so-called lifestyle squatters. As the historian Colin Ward says in his history of the subject:

"There has always been a distinction between squatting as a political demonstration and squatting as a personal solution to a housing problem. In the first instance the intention is for propagandist purposes, to be noticed. In the second the hope is to be inconspicuous and blend into the landscape".

The Occupy squats are there to be seen and heard. Other squatters are trying in nearly all cases to be quiet neighbours and keep themselves to themselves.

There are a number of reasons why I am challenging Clause 130. First, it is no way to deal with the vulnerable homeless. Secondly, alone in this Bill, which is all about cutting costs, it will pass substantial additional costs on to the Ministry of Justice and eventually the taxpayer. I know how anxious my noble friend is for the Government to reduce costs and for his department to reduce its budget. Thirdly, the Law Society, the Criminal Bar Association, the Metropolitan Police Service and Crisis all believe that it would be much more sensible for the Government to focus on ensuring that the current law, which is quite adequate, is enforced, rather than to create a new criminal offence.

Interestingly, that position has also been taken by Annington Holdings plc, one of the largest owners of private property in the UK, which describes enforcement as the crux of the problem. It is in empty premises unoccupied for months or years, intended at some time for redevelopment, where people are likely to squat. For the owners of those properties, the housing associations and so on, the recourse is of course civil remedy. I accept that large-scale landlords who have several, perhaps dozens, of empty homes that they intend to redevelop find it very annoying to have to have recourse to civil remedy if they find that one or more of their properties has been squatted.

As a former leader of the local authority in Somerset, I have seen this issue from the other side and I have some sympathy. Housing associations have been affected, as have many private sector developers, but the fact is that civil remedy is not difficult. It is tried, tested and backed up by a very experienced bailiff system, which is what the civil law is there for. One of the peculiarities of the proposed legislation is that it is likely to lengthen the time that it takes to evict squatters. Prosecuted under civil law, squatters can be removed with an interim possession order in just a couple of days but going through the CPS could take weeks or even months.

In March 2011, the Government made a very good move when they made the position clearer in a joint initiative between the MoJ and the Housing Minister, Grant Shapps. They issued updated guidance called Advice on Dealing with Squatters in your Home, which makes it clear that it is an offence for a squatter to fail to leave a residential property when asked to do so. I would ask the Minister what advice to the Government changed after March 2011. It was not the advice from the police who, in their formal response to the MoJ consultation, said:

"Criminalisation of squatting and subsequent enforcement would have an impact on policing, in terms of community relations, local policing objectives and cost".

They are not in favour of the change before us tonight. It was not on the advice of the enforcement agencies.

I do not know whether the Minister has had time to read the opinion of Claire Sandbrook, who is one of 60 authorised High Court enforcement officers and chair of Shergroup, which is a leading legal services company. She said:

"'The options put forward in the paper also have one massive omission-the option of enhancing the civil enforcement route for dealing with squatters. Certainly, to my knowledge, there have been no complaints as to how effectively HCEOs deal with squatters once the cases are put in their hands. HCEOs deal with squatter evictions quickly, efficiently, safely and without cost to the public purse once they are in a position to take control of the situation ... The trick would surely be to ensure that cases can be processed and actioned far more speedily through existing civil procedures".

The fact is that the police are neither resourced nor trained to take on the duties that the bailiffs are undertaking. They could do so only at considerable cost and with other vital law and order priorities being downgraded as a result.

What will happen if we leave Clause 130 as it is? I ask your Lordships to consider whether it would mean more empty homes are brought back into use quickly by housing associations and local authorities. No, it will not because the reason that those homes are not being renovated and brought back into use is almost always financial. Will it make it easier for private landlords to gain possession of empty properties? It will not make it any easier or simpler; it will just shift the financial burden from the civil procedure effectively to the taxpayer because the time spent on it will be time spent by the police instead of the bailiffs.

The Government's regulatory impact assessment envisages spending something between £3 million and £10 million more per year to enforce this. That is a very conservative estimate. I have seen others which estimate the sum to be nearer £20 million a year. The impact assessment does not cover the added costs to local authorities that presentation of numbers of vulnerable homeless will present-somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000-nor of children who will need special care arrangements. I think that taxpayers will ask who has benefited from this change. It will not be home owners, who are already protected.

I must say that the Government have made an excellent start on tackling the empty homes problem. Only in December last year, for the first time a £20 million fund was announced to provide support for single homeless people. The Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, then announced a review of barriers to investment in rented homes, and the Government introduced their empty homes strategy, when my honourable friend the Minister Andrew Stunell said:

"The number of empty homes in this country is a national scandal ... yet for every two families that need a home there is one standing empty. That is why I've made tackling the blight of empty homes a top priority for the Coalition ... we've made £150 million available to help councils and charities take radical action".

All the building blocks are in place to solve the empty homes issue and make squatting a thing of the past. That is the route I believe we should be taking. I do not think we should criminalise the vulnerable homeless and we should not be creating a worse housing crisis.

I admit that we have to solve a knotty and difficult problem, but the period between now and Report is when your Lordships need to look in depth at these issues and not at Clause 130 as it is before us tonight. I beg to move.

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the global demand for counselling on and abortion of pregnancies resulting from rape in the context of armed conflict; and what is their position with regard to provision of such services in conflict zones where women and girls are raped in hostile armed conflict situations.

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord McNally on 25 January (WA 250-1), how many evictions from squatted properties have been carried out by the police or bailiffs in the London metropolitan area in each of the last five years.

To ask Her Majesty's Government when the Home Office last issued guidance to the police with regard to the enforcement of the rights of displaced residential occupiers or protected intending occupiers as defined in Section 7 of the Criminal Law Act 1977.

To ask Her Majesty's Government what representations they have made to the Government of the United States regarding the possibility of the President issuing an executive order to lift the condition prohibiting abortion applied to all United States foreign aid, including humanitarian medical aid for girls and women raped in conflict.

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have piloted any schemes using Government-owned land for community growing spaces; and, if so, where.

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have plans to apply biodiversity offsetting policies to ancient woodlands; and what advice they have received about the length of time needed to recreate the habitat provided by ancient woodlands.

To ask Her Majesty's Government what definition of ancient woodland they use; and how many other categories of woodland there are.

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they issue standards and guidelines regarding the nutritional value of meals served to (1) patients in hospital, (2) prisoners, (3) staff in government departments, (4) schoolchildren, and (5) students eating at colleges of further or higher education.

To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress they have made on the commitment in their response to the Making Space for Nature review that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Communities and Local Government would work together to increase the provision of growing spaces for community groups and individuals who want to grow their own food.

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their estimate of the number of (1) residential, and (2) commercial properties in the United Kingdom in which there are currently squatters.

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their estimate of (1) the total number of people who are squatting, and (2) how many of these have children.

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many evictions from squatted properties have been carried out by the police or bailiffs in the London Metropolitan area in each of the past five years.

My Lords, I warmly congratulate my noble friend Lord Stoneham, not only on securing this important debate but on his powerful and overarching introduction.

I am a little sad that one of the contributions that we would have had during the past 10 years of debate would have been from the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, on the small but important sector of park homes; but time passes. A lot of people live in them and a lot are still purchasing them; if you drive down any motorway, you will see a number of them on lorries. It is an expanding sector that, in spite of the lack of the noble Lord reminding us of it and asking questions about it today, the Government need to keep their eye on.

Before I pass to the topic that I want to address, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, that we will have the opportunity to debate the issue of squatting in the forthcoming Clause 130 of the legal aid Bill. I am sure that she will be aware of the briefing that went around from the Law Association saying that the law as it stands is quite adequate, and the issue is actually its enforcement. Before we leap to yet more legislation, which Governments often see as a panacea for everything, we should make proper use of the law that there is. As I say, we will have a chance to debate that when we get to that clause.

Today I want to talk about the issue of self-build homes. When the Government came in, I am glad to say that one of the first meetings that Grant Shapps had as Housing Minister was with the National Self Build Association, which has been going since about 2009, although self-build as a form of housing has obviously been going for much longer than that. Grant Shapps was very positive and keen to help the association to promote its growth. They met again in January 2011, when he announced that he was setting up a government self-build industry working group with the association to look at what could be done to boost the level of self-build in the UK. I am glad that the Government recognise the importance of the sector.

It is very good that the Government have the National Self Build Association to work with. This will not be a plea for funding but, to date, the association has not received even the smallest pump-priming grant. Its members are all volunteers. An extremely small grant to help with such things as the portal that it is creating for self-builders-I am talking about just a few thousand pounds-would be incredibly helpful.

I want to talk about why we should think about this sector in particular. What does it bring to the communities where self-build happens? To answer that, it is helpful to look at some of the examples that have already happened. I got involved in this sector when I was still a councillor in Somerset and I learnt a lot from the self-builders who came forward for planning permission in a small village called South Petherton. It had a site that was very difficult to develop. It was on a hillside, not that accessible and surrounded by other housing. The private sector was not interested in developing it but the self-builders were interested because it was a very affordable plot. They developed it using a Walter Segal method, which adapts itself very well to steep and difficult-to-develop hillsides. Since then I have seen many other West Country examples. Ashley Vale in Bristol is very much an example of an inner-city scheme, while there is a small-town scheme in Stroud. We are not talking about a small-scale thing. Self-build can lead to 20,000 homes a year, so it is a major part of the housing sector.

I want to concentrate on community self-help schemes, rather than the sort of thing your Lordships may occasionally see on "Grand Designs"-a quite wealthy person building a state-of the-art palace. That is easy to do if you have all that money. However, I am interested in the community schemes for people with very limited funds and, very often, for young people who have some skills but not all those they need. The sort of model that is productive is one in which a group comes together-perhaps 20 different individuals or households with skills that vary across plumbers, carpenters, electricians and bricklayers and people who have no skills to date but develop them. Such schemes take an awful lot of time in the planning-perhaps as long as five or eight years-because they have to find a site, which is the hardest bit and something that I shall come back to in a minute. They also have to go through planning permission. It is my hope that the Localism Act will enable and promote this very strong form of community self-help in housing. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said that local people often put up objections to any housing being built. I certainly agree with him on that, but if it is the sons and daughters of the community who will build their own homes, it has a much more than even fighting chance of getting community support in the first place.

Self-building is also a very economical way of gaining your own home. The plot of land will be the most expensive aspect, but after that it just depends on how much time the self-builders put in and whether they have to buy in any help. The costs can be driven down. Many people on the site I visited do their self-building in the evenings between April and October and at weekends all the year round. Working in that way, they have managed to complete their homes in 18 months to two years.

You certainly have to be tenacious to be a self-builder and not get downhearted. When one family or individual drops out of a scheme for one reason or another, it obviously puts an extra strain on it. That is something that has to be carefully built into the agreement and is part of what takes up the fairly long lead-in time.

Such homes are often much better designed, too, because people design them themselves so they suit people's very distinctive needs. They are almost always much greener; I have not seen a case where they are not. Their carbon footprint is one of their joys. People often turn to self-build for environmental and ecological reasons as well as economic ones. They make every effort to ensure that their home has a very small carbon footprint.

One of the other organisations with which I have been involved over the years is the Ecos Trust, formerly Ecos Homes, again in Somerset. The wife of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, has also played a leading role with it. It has created a number of demonstration models to show all the different environmental benefits that you can get-not only energy efficiency in the building of the homes but all the different materials that can be used. It runs workshops so that people can learn different methods of working and see different models that have been developed.

Self-build is a very exciting sector with many possibilities. One of the issues that has come across to me very strongly from having visited the same sort of thing in France-this addresses rural housing-is the ease with which local French mayors, especially in rural areas, consider this a viable form of housing. They will purchase for their community a small or middle-sized field on the edge of their village and put in the infrastructure so that it comes with gas, electricity, water and sewerage provision. The plots are then sold to individuals. I am sure a number of your Lordships will have seen the advertisement "lotissement", showing that plots are for sale. For the young of that village, and those from elsewhere should they want to move to that village, it is a very affordable form of housing.

This is something that I hope the Housing Minister will pursue with all vigour and some imagination. Two things would make all the difference. One is definitely land availability. My suggestion to the Minister today is that when large sites are being considered for housing, perhaps for 100 houses, some of that-perhaps 20 per cent-could be set aside for self-build. It is something on which there should at least be much more consultation. Where there is a great demand for it and a community that will take it up, it would be a very affordable way for the younger generation, in particular, to develop housing.

There are also other sites that we do not often consider, such as ex-Army sites. They often have a lot of infrastructure. You can imagine a whole self-build eco-town on an ex-Army site, which would be quite a "swords into ploughshares" experience and one that would be very exciting.

As well as land availability, the other issue is the value of self-build in upskilling people. It allows people to work on NVQs and exchange skills while they are self-building. Their local college often gets involved, which is an extremely helpful development, too. It not only upskills the younger generation but provides them with an affordable home. I hope that some positive messages are about to come from the Government on further help for this sector.

The "happy pigs are tasty pigs" message is a very forceful one but UK government procurement policy over the past decade since the sow stall method was changed here has not really been got over, either in government procurement or by UK supermarkets to their customers. What do this Government intend to do about procurement policy on UK pork and bacon?

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, on securing this debate, but I note that her Motion talks just about the Government's green agenda. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, on one point: it would be regrettable if we interpreted the green agenda as meaning just carbon reduction or even climate change; it goes much wider than that. As for his other remarks, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, that what we should be talking about is our use of resources and the need to drive down our use of non-renewable resources, even if the science of climate change is wrong and the survival of the planet is not under threat. Trying to preserve as many resources as we can for future generations is our absolute responsibility.

I shall confine my remarks today to a completely different issue on the green agenda, and that is food. Of course, food encompasses energy use, land use and water use, while the food we waste has big implications even in terms of climate change when we consider methane escaping from landfill sites. That leads to my first question for the Minister. Other countries in the EU have now set a final date in many cases of 2015 for ending the dumping of biodegradable waste in landfill sites. Is the UK going to reconsider this? There are so many useful ways to utilise waste food. Separation technologies have progressed a long way, so it is no longer only a question of anaerobic digestion processes. However, anaerobic digestion allows the heat generated to be used and the resultant fertiliser to be used on farmland. There are a lot of interesting things to think about in this area. One of the most useful things that has happened recently is the quality marking given by the Environment Agency and WRAP to the fertiliser produced by this process. Farmers can now be sure that they are using a quality product and do not have to worry about it.

I also want to share with the House today a couple of particularly inspiring matters that Members of the House may have heard about on the BBC Radio 4 "Food Programme", which itself deserves an award. The first is the Derek Cooper Award, which recognises long-term work. In this case, it went to a partnership between the Health Education Trust, Garden Organic, Focus on Food and the Soil Association for all their work with schools on improving school food and children's understanding of where food comes from, as well as every aspect of how children are impacted by the food they eat. I cannot think of anything more important. The noble Lord, Lord Prescott, referred to the effect that children can have in their homes by influencing their parents, so this is not just about the children.

In schools where the Food for Life Partnership has worked, there have been tangible benefits. For example, twice as many primary schools received an "outstanding" Ofsted rating after working with the Food for Life Partnership. Nothing could be more tangible than that. I am very pleased that this Government have been encouraging that sort of very practical and important work on food in schools. Sarah Teather, the Minister with responsibility for schools, has brought in new powers so that schools will, for example, be able to offer price promotions on meals to particular pupils, encouraging more children to try a healthy school lunch. There has always been a bit of tension between local takeaways encouraging children to go in and buy a portion of chips and school canteens selling a healthy school lunch. Freeing up schools to be able to offer healthy food cheaply sometimes, as a special promotion, is really important.

The other award went to Jeanette Orrey, who has probably done more for school food than almost anybody else. She was a dinner lady but I guess she does not have much time to be a dinner lady now. She got an MBE in the New Year Honours List for services to food in schools. Those people have influenced the up-and-coming generations tremendously.

Two other examples of communities-one very big and one very small-greening themselves were outlined recently in your Lordships' House on 6 December 2011 to the All-Party Group on Agroecology. The group heard first from Rosie Boycott, who is chair of the London Food Board and its subset Capital Growth. She told us of Capital Growth's ambition to create 2,012 new growing spaces for people to grow their own food in London. This is incredibly important when you consider how few allotments there are and how long the waiting lists are-you can be on the waiting list for just about your entire adult life. This organisation has set about creating new growing spaces in, for example, skips behind Kings Cross, which is being developed. When the development moves to its next stage, the skips can be moved. Some have been created on unused land that is earmarked for development. So far, Capital Growth has 1,460 vegetable growing spaces in the capital, 50,000 volunteers, which is a phenomenal number, and 50 hectares of land. The project involves 21 London boroughs, 10 housing associations and 10,000 schoolchildren.

One of the very interesting things that Rosie Boycott told us as she showed us some fantastic illustrations of beans growing up the sides of buildings and beehives on the tops of buildings was that the spaces are never vandalised. The tangible, measurable benefits include better health, literacy rates going up, obesity rates dropping, an increase in science uptake in schools where there is vegetable-growing, lower crime rates-the police said that a community vegetable space means that fewer bobbies on the beat are needed-attractive routes to work and an entrepreneurial impact. Therefore, some of the work that the London Food Board has been doing reaches out far beyond food.

At the other end of the scale in terms of size but certainly not in terms of impact, the all-party group heard from Mary Clear, who has led a project in the small town of Todmorden, which has renamed itself "Incredible Edible Todmorden". She was probably the most inspiring person I heard speak last year. She told us why food is an agent for change and why growing food builds communities. She described how they had even persuaded the police to allow a vegetable garden to be built outside the police station. When the PCT was going to be rebuilt and had £20,000 for landscaping, they hijacked all the money in order to plant orchards and an apothecary garden. They also have pick-your-own herbs at the station. The fire station joined in, as did six primary schools and a secondary school. It is hard to put over the enthusiasm and energy that this town has brought to this project, but it has clearly brought the whole town together and the streets are lined with vegetables and fruit trees. It is quite incredible. If that can happen in the sort of climate that you find in the north of England, it could happen anywhere in the UK.

We should think of food as an agent for change and for reminding people why "green issues" means something much wider than just carbon reduction. We need to see it from an entrepreneurial perspective as helping economic growth as well. We must return to thinking of the green agenda as being wide, and a very good place to begin is with food. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for giving us the chance to debate these issues today.

I, too, would like to thank my noble friend Lady Jenkin of Kennington for this debate tonight and also for her brilliant analysis of why we must change our attitude to food waste. I further thank her for introducing me to Tristram Stuart and his book, which she has generously lent me, Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal, which I felt could have been subtitled "a philosophy for life".I feel passionately that it is immoral to waste the planet's resources; he gives the facts and figures behind that immorality and shows that there is a different way forward.

My noble friend Lady Jenkin mentioned the examples from Japan showing how it is technologically possible to separate out food waste streams and create an entirely safe way of feeding food pellets-perhaps the term "swill" is not helpful anymore-to non-ruminants with no risk at all, to create a better, more premium product. That is an entirely desirable vision which is actually realisable. It is all about having the confidence to regulate the food streams in that way and giving industry the confidence that the regulators can do it. I think that consumer confidence will then follow. People go off quite happily to Japan and other places that are doing this and eat pork, so it is not as though this is an impossible vision to realise.

In my contribution tonight, I mostly want to talk about the environmental damage that will occur if we do not change our attitude. First, I want to pick up something that my noble friend Lady Byford mentioned-the question of GM soya. I will be very sorry if this debate about food waste was in any way hijacked-I am certainly not suggesting that my noble friend was doing this-by those who want to promote the increased use of soya feed, whether or not it is GM. We cannot import GM soya into the EU at the moment, but this should not be seen as a marketing opportunity for GM feed producers to push their product, just because the non-GM soya has got so expensive. This is all about replacing the soya, and that is what I want to concentrate on: why we should be replacing it.

The ban on feeding food waste to livestock necessarily meant that Europe has had to increase imports of commercial livestock feeds, including soy meal, of which roughly 40 million tonnes are imported to Europe annually. The amount of land needed to produce soy for the European market since the ban on meat and bone meal in 1996 is roughly equal to the area of deforestation in the Brazilian rainforests since that date. That might be coincidence, but it is a very good example of this destruction. It is for this reason that the United Nations called on the EU to reconsider the overcautious legislation, concluding that encouraging the recycling of food waste into livestock feed could,

"contribute substantially to the feed supply, and by the same token release pressure on land"-

thereby reducing,

"biodiversity erosion, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions".

Poultry feed accounts for more than half of all soya used in the UK livestock sector and much of this could be replaced by using food wastes, including processed animal proteins.

As well as land use causing deforestation, another knock-on effect is that of local farmers in Latin America who are evicted from their landholdings to make way for the large ranches and soya plantations. Last month, at the All-Party Group on Agro-Ecology, of which I must declare an interest as a co-chairman, we heard from the national co-ordinator of the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil about the effect on families who not only lose their land but can no longer grow food for their communities.

In Paraguay, 2.5 million hectares of soil were planted in 2006-07. Friends of the Earth found that every year in Paraguay alone 9,000 rural families were evicted because of soya production. Therefore, those families are not producing food for themselves and their communities. I have seen for myself the importance of corn, rice and beans in the Latin American diet. That food production is being displaced by soya production and the effect is that families are no longer able to afford a basic nutrition basket.

It is certainly not just me who has made that link. Defra has made the link between what happens when we import so much soya feed and what happens on the ground in Latin America. Recently, the Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, announced that Britain would contribute £10 million to help to protect the Cerrado in Brazil. She said:

"The Cerrado is rich in biodiversity and yet, alarmingly, it has almost halved in size, because of wild fires and the demand for agricultural products".

Because of time I will not go on with what she said, but she made a very good analysis of the problem. She spoke about the loss and in conclusion she said:

"We won't succeed in tackling climate change unless we deal with deforestation".

We really must wean ourselves off this extreme need for soya.

I should like to look at the points of resistance that allow us to throw away so much; that is, the FSA, the NFU, the supermarkets and the food processing industry. The FSA is tasked to be rigorous in its risk assessment but, in its recent analysis, it said that the risks to human health of feeding PAP to pigs and chickens was negligible. That does not suggest a high risk or even a medium risk; it is a negligible risk. It is probably the sort of equivalent risk to something that is very common and highly regulated-the spreading of sewage on farmland. The FSA's conclusion was that the risks were negligible. But its board also did not look at the benefits in environmental terms of stopping some of the issues that I have mentioned, such as deforestation. That might be because it is not in its remit but in our globalised world where everything is linked, it is hard to think that it should not have had a view on that.

I am sorry to say that I found the NFU brief for this debate rather shocking. Most of its reasons for why this was not a good idea were not mentioned tonight. They included staff in supermarkets being less well informed and not understanding the importance of properly segregating the products. Furthermore, the NFU believes that pet pig owners might pose a problem. Finally, in this regard, it states:

"Should the focus become more about using pigs to dispose of waste, the level of ammonia and nitrogen excreted from pigs could increase".

I think that the NFU has been missing the point. I would ask it to go back and look at some of the examples that the noble Baroness quoted of things that are happening abroad and think about whether it could not help the pig industry here by taking a bit more of a positive attitude.

Finally, WRAP, the supermarkets and the processors have made some very good steps with the Courtauld commitment. Phase 2, which is happening now, is all about achieving the more sustainable use of resources. Pretty much all our major supermarkets and processors are signed up that. Part of that commitment must be to address this issue and to make progress on it. So my question for the Minister is this: does he think the Government could help with the very unhelpful regulation on the one-roof policy, which means that if something is produced under the same geographical roof of an establishment that also deals with meat products, that is always going to be a huge hindrance? Is this not more about working towards a total separation plan and making sure that it is regulated and enforced? That is the way forward.

In conclusion, this is all about education in schools and getting our children to realise the effect of wasting anything. Some great examples can be found in the Food for Life Partnership in schools and by the Royal Horticultural Society. Earlier today a parliamentary delegation went down to Wisley to see some of its work with school children, who completely got the thing about, "If you have put all that effort into growing food, do not waste it".

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, for enabling Parliament to get back to the place where it should have been, and was, after the Coroners Act. She has done a tremendous job. It has also brought forth something that she mentioned briefly in her speech-she is now involved in the training of coroners. Already there is tremendous progress. I am also hugely grateful for all the work that my noble friend Lord McNally has put into this matter, because I am sure it is not easy to turn the ship of government around when it is sailing so fast in one direction. I can imagine the sort of effort that he had to put in.

The Royal British Legion and Inquest deserve particular gratitude, as do all the other organisations that signed the letter to the Times. A lot of them are run and supported by bereaved families, and it is not easy to go out and campaign when in the midst of grief. Some of those parents and siblings came to give evidence to parliamentarians about what had happened to them at inquests. I should like to take this opportunity to put on record my thanks to those people for giving us examples of why not only the training but the attitude of coroners to issues such as timeliness are extremely important.

I have one question for the Minister. The charter on the table is not now just for bereaved people but for anyone who comes before the coronial system. Some of us, including me, certainly felt that it should be a charter for bereaved people. It is not yet finalised and I hope that the chief coroner, who will be in a wonderful position to cast his or her eye over the draft charter, will have an opportunity to comment on it and perhaps improve it in the light of the things that he or she hears when talking to coroners.

Finally, I wish to comment from a purely personal point of view on the issue of appeals. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, made some very good points about the fact that the issue could lie on the table and be implemented later, if necessary, but my heart lies with the government position, and it is not really a question of cost. In many cases, there will never be real satisfaction for the bereaved because, even though the process may have been thorough, timely and open, that is just the nature of bereavement; there is no satisfaction. If the chief coroner manages with all his other coroners to get the process right, there should be no need for appeals. There will obviously be an interim period that will not be entirely satisfactory, but the package on the table is all that we could have hoped for and is one for which I am particularly grateful.

My Lords, the Bill marks an important moment. It is the start of the turn of the tide from a very low point where sophisticated new technologies, fear of terrorism, authorities with little regard for privacy and a series of illiberal Home Secretaries combined to make the UK "surveillance Britain" under the previous Government. So when Justice called the proposals a sticking plaster, it missed the point. This Bill is a very important first step in addressing what privacy and freedoms should mean in the 21st century. Justice has just published an excellent new publication Freedom from Suspicion - Surveillance Reform for a Digital Age, which highlights the fact that we have moved into a new era that existing legislation is not able to cope with. It did not anticipate the rapidity of technological advance, which is enormous. The scale of technological capability is beyond anything that was imagined, even when the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill was drafted.

In common with all noble Lords, I can remember when opening someone's post without proper authorisation was a serious offence, yet in the internet age, popping in to their IP address and having a look at what they are up to is not taken as seriously as it should be. An example is that, legislatively, RIPA offered protection when, in 2006, BT and Phorm decided to run a secret trial of marketing software that intercepted the private internet sessions of thousands of customers. It was illegal, but the CPS took no action. That set a very bad precedent that ignoring RIPA is not serious.

In April this year, the Information Commissioner said:

"RIPA was drafted for the wiretap age".

The Law Society's comments are similar. In its written evidence to the House of Commons Public Bill Committee on this Bill, it stated that RIPA is,

"a confused and complex legislative framework for surveillance, along with equally complex and overlapping oversight arrangements".

Other examples of the technologies give us an idea of the complexity. The Guardian has highlighted that the Metropolitan Police are operating covert surveillance technology with a signal that shuts off mobile phones remotely, intercepts communications and gathers data about thousands of users in a targeted area. That has big implications for the right to protest and freedom of expression. The Met has also purchased software to map digital movements using data gathered from social networking sites, sat-nav equipment, mobile phones, financial transactions and IP network logs.

How should this be regulated? Clause 37 gives the Secretary of State welcome power by order to require judicial authorisation for targeted surveillance authorisations by other public bodies, but I would like us to debate in Committee an amendment providing that prior judicial authorisation would be an integral part of the whole system. Such authorisation would have picked up the disgraceful, long-term and costly surveillance operations undertaken by the police on peaceful environmental movements.

How do we as parliamentarians assure ourselves that such capability is being used in the right way? We have the commissioners-my noble friend Lady Hamwee mentioned that we do not have a collective noun for a group of commissioners-and the Bill adds two new ones: the Surveillance Camera Commissioner and the Commissioner for Retention and Use of Biometric Material. The problem is that the commissioners have different roles and areas of responsibility that have been built up in a very piecemeal way. There are not overlaps but there are gaps in responsibilities. I would like to explore whether we would be better served by one privacy commissioner with an overarching role. We know that the Chief Surveillance Commissioner has quite limited powers. His function is just to keep under review the operation of the powers and duties of directed and covert surveillance. The Interception of Communications Commissioner's role is limited to the oversight of those who issue warrants and the procedures of those acting under warrants. He has no power to investigate complaints or to advise the public.

The best model-the Information Commissioner-is responsible for promoting and enforcing compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998. It is this role of advising the public that is really important. Citizens need an independent powerful figure-who is outward-facing to them, as well as inward-facing to the authorities operating under the various legislative frameworks including RIPA. We have a lot of work to do in this Bill just to keep up with the capabilities of the technology. I welcome a debate on how to do that.

I particularly welcome the repeal of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000: "stop and search". It is very welcome indeed. I also welcome proposals that will see the destruction of the DNA samples of those arrested and charged with a minor offence but never convicted. I am, however, very disappointed that the position of children arrested or charged but never convicted of serious offences is unchanged. We need to examine that closely in this House. Finally, I am disappointed that there is no amendment to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 so that it recognises peaceful protest as a fundamental part of democracy. It leaves in place the "aggravated trespass" offence. That was recently employed, for example, against all the individuals who were peacefully protesting with UK Uncut at Fortnum & Mason earlier this year in March. That use of "aggravated trespass" is an affront to the concept of peaceful protest.

To ask Her Majesty's Government, in the light of the Environment Agency advice that "selenium is an essential element (micronutrient) for animals and humans", what assessment they have made of changes in uptake by plants of selenium; and whether this is likely to be as a result of changes in soil pH, or, if not, for what other reasons.

To ask Her Majesty's Government how they assess which areas of the country to prioritise for increased soil management regimes.