Lord Grayling (Con)

My Lords, I rise briefly to speak in support of the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, on crops, and to share many of the concerns raised about HEFA. I declare my interests on the register as an adviser to AtkinsRéalis—there are a lot of us here today. My concerns are that, first, I do not believe that we should be using crops to make fuel. In a world that does not have enough food and where biodiversity is under threat, where deforestation is happening in areas of the world that provide extra land for agriculture, I do not think that there is any justification for growing food and turning it into fuel. I ask the Minister please to exclude crops. The United States is permitting them, and the European Union is not, and I think that we should fall on the side of avoiding the use of agricultural crops. Agricultural waste is a different thing —the residue from crops, such as straw and corn husks. Agricultural waste is one thing, but actual crops is another, and we should not be using them. On HEFA, we are where we are, but we have to exercise extreme care, because the truth is that there is not enough used cooking oil in the world to fill the supposed need for that used cooking oil. All too often, the suspicion is that somebody is dumping a chicken wing into a tub of virgin palm oil and saying that it is HEFA—so HEFA is something that we need to move away from as quickly as possible. In any case, we depend on imports from the Far East for it, which may not be sustainable going forwards. Our focus should really be on biowaste and municipal waste and on the technologies that offer a really good path for the future —but let us not use crops and let us be extremely careful with what we do with HEFA. I have a lot of sympathy with what my noble friend Lord Moylan and the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, have said. It is far from clear that this is a genuine product that has the full potential to do what is necessary.