Environment Bill

Written evidence submitted by the Mineral Products Association (EB34)

Executive Summary

· The Environment Bill has all the right building blocks

· Designing the target setting and measuring process is key to delivering the bill’s full potential

· The Bill should integrate environmental spatial planning into coherent local planning framework

· The Bill is an opportunity to create a clear, simplified and consistent framework for organisations to manage their impacts and responsibilities

About MPA

· The Mineral Products Association (MPA) is the trade association for the aggregates, asphalt, cement, concrete, dimension stone, lime, mortar and silica sand industries. With the affiliation of British Precast, the British Association of Reinforcement (BAR), Eurobitume, MPA Northern Ireland, MPA Scotland and the British Calcium Carbonate Federation, it has a growing membership of 530 companies and is the sectoral voice for mineral products. MPA membership is made up of the vast majority of independent SME quarrying companies throughout the UK, as well as the 9 major international and global companies. It covers 100% of UK cement production, 90% of GB aggregates production, 95% of asphalt and over 70% of ready-mixed concrete and precast concrete production.

· In 2016, the industry supplied £18 billion worth of materials and services to the economy and was the largest supplier to the construction industry, which had annual output valued at £152 billion. Industry production represents the largest materials flow in the UK economy and is also one of the largest manufacturing sectors.

The Environment Bill has all the right building blocks

Broadly speaking, the Environment Bill does all the right things. Businesses will always seek to maximise clarity and certainty and given the environmental challenges we face following departure of the European Union, the Bill does a good job of delivering the right framework for this.

The integrated framework of the Bill is the correct approach: as businesses, our members consider their environmental impact in the round and legislation designed to do the same is welcome. However, it remains unclear how this framework will effectively interact with the local planning regimes that will ultimately be required to deliver these requirements on the ground in practice in a consistent and proportionate manner.

One building block that could be given more stature is the Office for Environmental Protection, which MPA members have suggested should be formally independent of Government on a similar footing to the CCC. The Secretary of State should be required to give an explanation to Parliament when he or she decides to not follow their advice.

Designing the target setting and measuring process is key to delivering the Bill’s full potential

The Bill introduces a substantial set of targets and processes for monitoring them. It is a good opportunity to ensure that these are pulling in a consistent direction over the long term, beyond the tenure of any individual Secretary of State or even Government. The 25 year plan, nature recovery and biodiversity targets and the Net Zero target must work as a whole and not be pursued independently of each other.

Similarly, the more transparent the process of setting targets the better, protecting against arbitrary targets and better ensuring buy-in from business and wider society. The Bill gives wide discretionary powers to the Secretary of State across many key areas including air quality, waste, soils and water. When using these powers, the he or she should be obliged by the Bill to carry out a proper public consultation. Any subsequent Statutory Instrument should have to go through the positive approval procedure.

Ensuring sufficient monitoring is in place to ensure compliance over time is important. At present, the Secretary of State is meaningfully accountable only at the point at which targets are met or missed; he or she should be accountable for the entire journey towards a target.

In this respect, there is an opportunity to introduce an adaptive management approach to delivery, whereby the actions required can be modified and adapted over time in response to the signals provided by monitoring evidence to ensure the desired outcomes can be delivered. This is becoming increasingly common practice in environmental regulation, where uncertainty may have to be managed.

The Bill should integrate environmental spatial planning into coherent local planning framework

The local planning system is already under fairly serious challenge, with scarce expertise and limited resources. The vast majority of aggregates supply is used in construction, improving our housing stock, schools and hospitals, alongside our transport and energy infrastructure. Construction including but not limited to high-profile infrastructure projects, is a key element of Government’s Industrial Strategy, aiming to boost productivity and secure sustainable future economic growth. MPA scenarios have predicted that between 3.2 and 3.8 billion tonnes of construction material will be required to service these needs to 2030 (MPA Long Term Aggregate Demand & Supply Scenarios 2016-2030). However, the most recent Annual Mineral Planning Survey (AMPS, link here) reports that

"Demand for land-won sand and gravel continues to outstrip the amount of new reserves being permitted, with the 10-year average replenishment rate at 63%... …indicating that sales continue to outstrip the amount of new reserves permitted" AMPS, p2

Local planning is therefore already struggling to deliver its basic functions, and there is a risk that loading more requirements will cause further stress and further hinder delivery. The Environment Bill has an opportunity to realise a more integrated, better resourced local planning framework that enables specialist mineral planners, environmental specialists and the general planning system to work together better, by introducing a more coherent and consistent framework for introducing climate and environment targets into the planning system, where ultimately the outcomes desired will be delivered in practice.

The Bill is an opportunity to create a clear, simplified and consistent framework for organisations to manage their impacts and responsibilities

Environmental legislation has tended to be piecemeal, with duplication and inefficiency. The Bill is an opportunity to create a single, overarching framework for all organisations including businesses, to manage their environmental responsibilities.

March 2020