13:42 - The House divided: - Ayes: 62 / Noes: 29 - Jeremy Wright
Mr Nuttall
There is a danger of that happening, and I thank my hon. Friend for that point. The Bill may make that problem even worse.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene before I make my main remarks. Many comments have been made about cows and fields and so on, but it would be helpful if I informed the House that the substance of the debate is where we get soya bean meal from. The vast bulk of it is fed to pigs and poultry, not to grazing livestock, so if we are going to discuss that issue we need to recognise that if we do not import such meal, we will not have any pigmeat or poultry meat.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
May I start by reminding the House of my interests, as declared in the register?
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) on drawing second place, I believe, in the ballot. Many of us have been in the House far longer and have never got on the list at all, and there is always an element of envy when people manage to get a high place on it in their very first Parliament.
As the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) said, the Bill provides the opportunity for a hugely important debate. I hope the House will forgive me if I spend some time going through a number of related matters and explaining what the Government are already undertaking. Before doing so, may I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on what I believe is his first speech at the Dispatch Box? He will forgive me if I am mistaken, but it is certainly the first one opposite me. He made a very good speech, and I agreed with virtually everything he said, which will probably finish his political career completely. The exception was his brave effort to say that the Bill would help. I could see an element of fence-sitting there—I hope it was not too painful.
The hon. Gentleman rightly referred to the importance of agriculture as an industry and to the increasing world demand for food. He clearly agreed with a number of my hon. Friends, who have said that simply pushing for less meat-eating is not the way forward, given the increased demand elsewhere. He rightly said that agricultural growth was the best form of economic growth in poorer countries, and mentioned the 20% fall in agricultural emissions, which is considerably better than in many other sectors. Those were all good points on which I support him entirely. I hope he will forgive me if I chide him slightly by asking why, if the Opposition are so supportive of the Bill, the Labour Government opposed it when it was presented by my then hon. Friend Peter Ainsworth. No doubt they are learning by their mistakes, for which we must all be grateful.
This has been a good debate, and none of us could argue that the sustainability of the UK livestock system is of anything but prime importance to everybody. It has, however, given rise to a number of what I can only call myths and misunderstandings about today’s livestock industry. For a start, there has been a lot of talk about large-scale dairy enterprises. The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) referred to my remarks at a previous Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Question Time. I am grateful that she remembers them five weeks after I made them—that does not happen very often, so I will bask in the reflected glory. When we discuss the matter, we need to know certain facts. It is not for the Government to be for or against large-scale dairies, and the particular case in question is subject to a planning application, but I hope that the debate can be held on the basis of facts.
The reality is that the animals at the proposed 8,000-unit diary will still be fed largely on roughage, as are all ruminants. The fact is that ruminants—cattle and sheep—cannot survive on all-cereal diets, because their digestive systems cannot cope. They must have silage, grass, hay or something similar as a substantial part of their diet. The difference with the proposition at Nocton is that the grass or silage will be brought to the animals; they will not go out to it, although they will still be on it.
Someone referred to the NFU briefing, and the reality is that ruminant diets contain on average only about 3% soya bean. The fact that a dairy unit is large does not mean that it will use any more soya per cow than a small dairy unit. As I said in my intervention, the vast bulk of soya feeding, and indeed grain feeding, goes on in the pig and poultry sectors, where the livestock cannot live on anything else. Pigs will eat a bit of grass, but they cannot extract the nutrients from it, and poultry, of course, feed on seeds—hence their diet of grain, nuts and things like that, certainly in the wild. If we try to curtail the use of soya or grain, it is the intensive white-meat sector—the pig and poultry sectors—that will be most affected.
As a number of colleagues have said, the livestock sector accounts for more than half the £20 billion gross output of UK agriculture as a whole. That primary production is part of the biggest manufacturing industry in this country. The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) is no longer in the Chamber, but he made a pertinent point about the importance of domestic food production. He referred to high-quality, traceable and nutritious food. The word “traceable” is one we must spend a moment on, because the more food that comes from abroad, the harder the challenge of ensuring traceability becomes. As we all know, traceability is critical to food safety and production standards.
The food manufacturing industry employs almost 400,000 people and contributes £20 billon in gross value added. Unless our farming industry produces the raw materials for that industry, we will lose that manufacturing sector as well as our farming sector.
As several hon. Members on both sides of the debate have said, the contribution made by farming is about much more than simply food; it is about creating and maintaining our landscapes and our biodiversity, as well as about our food security. Indeed, it is also about the viability of many of our rural communities, because more remote communities tend to be in areas where livestock is the only form of production possible.
I want to re-emphasise a point that I made earlier, because there is a belief on both sides of the House that if we stopped importing soya, all the stock would somehow go out on to grass and we could return to the chocolate-box days when there were cows in every field. That is not the reality. Cattle is not the sector where the majority of grain and soya is used.
Like everybody in the Chamber, the Government wholly accept and share the objectives and aspiration in the Bill, which is about ensuring the sustainability of our livestock industry, but it is not right to try to do that through a regulatory framework, as the Bill does.
Mr Chope
As my hon. Friend said, there is a public misconception about the link between soya imports and large-scale dairy units. What is his Department doing to put the public right on that and to remove that public misconception? Obviously, his speech today is helping, but what else can his Department do?
Mr Paice
It is not for the Government, directly, to say that one form of production is right and that another is wrong. What matters most—I will come to this in a minute—is that consumers are properly informed about how and where their food is produced. They can then make the right judgment according to their own views and beliefs.
Mr Nuttall
The best way of keeping consumers informed is, of course, through honesty in food labelling. I understand that the Government propose to move the responsibility for that from the Food Standards Agency to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Perhaps the Minister will comment on how that will play a part.
Mr Paice
I will indeed, but perhaps my hon. Friend will bear with me until I get to that point in my remarks.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South slightly chided the Government when he said that our structural reform business plan contained no reference to the use of soya, yet there is no reference to it in the Bill. However, the Government’s business plan has a priority of supporting a competitive and sustainable British food and farming industry. That is our No. 1 objective. Alongside it go issues such as enhancing the environment and biodiversity to improve quality of life and support a strong and sustainable green economy that is resilient to climate change. It cannot be made any more obvious that a sustainable livestock industry sits clearly in that framework of ambition.
We support a sustainable future for livestock farming and food production in which the whole chain—the farmers and their representative organisations, food chain businesses, consumers and the Government—plays its part by operating efficiently, sharing information and learning, and, as the hon. Member for Glasgow North East said, eliminating waste. However, I emphasise that we do not believe that the best way of going about that is through the regulatory approach in the Bill, or even, as some have suggested, through a soundbite approach of giving the Secretary of State a duty to ensure the sustainability of the industry. Clearly, that is impossible for any Secretary of State; it flies in the face of common sense.
There has been some debate about the scope of the Bill. Hon. Members have referred to the fact that Scotland and Northern Ireland are excluded, yet clause 5 implies that Wales is included. That is simply another fundamentally flawed aspect of the Bill, because agriculture and sustainability are devolved to the Welsh Assembly.
Taking the matter forward requires clear resolve and determination from the Government. It requires a resolution that we will work with industry in partnership as it delivers its commitments and, when necessary, take steps to ensure that those commitments are fulfilled.
We also need the ambition to realise that Government do not have all the answers. The Government have never pretended—and will never pretend—to know all the answers to everything. It is for those with the best knowledge of their businesses and activities to devise solutions. That is why I am happy today to offer a different approach from the detailed prescription in the Bill, which sets out how and when the Secretary of State should consult and so on. I want to make the Bill’s promoter and sponsors a genuine offer from the Government. I invite them to participate in a broad conference of all those concerned with the sustainability of the livestock industry, to be held early next year, and convened and run by stakeholders in the industry. It will reflect on and debate the activities that are already under way in the livestock sectors, and consider what has been achieved and what remains to be done. I will expand on that shortly.
I shall outline some of the activity that is already taking place and the Government’s approach. Like the previous Government, we believe that a partnership approach is right. First and foremost, I want to show that we can trust farmers to do the right thing. If we trust people, they must accept responsibility. The UK livestock industry is showing its leadership and commitment to operating sustainably. The dairy supply chain forum’s milk road map is a good example of what can be achieved through bringing producers, processors and retailers together to commit themselves publicly to milestones for more sustainable operation on, for example, dairy farm land, and in environmental stewardship, nutrient planning, recycled plastic milk bottles and so on. I look forward to seeing the new targets for sustainability in the updated road map when it is published next spring.
The hon. Member for Glasgow North East referred to the pig sector and the work it has done in producing its own product road maps. The beef and sheep sectors are also working to produce road maps to provide frameworks for measuring the sustainability of their operations. I am genuinely encouraged by their commitment to developing supply-chain approaches to sustainability. The Government will work closely with each of those sectors to encourage the agricultural industry in partnership in England to implement the reductions in on-farm greenhouse gas emissions, which were set out in the frameworks for action earlier this year.
There are other areas where the Government can and do help in respect of the subject matter of the Bill. On public procurement, which was mentioned in the debate, we are developing Government buying standards for food. They will be mandatory for central Government and our agencies, and we will promote them to the wider public sector. The standards will set a clear definition of healthy and sustainable food procurement and will allow us to lead by example in influencing procurement practice.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) said, labelling is also a key priority for the Government. Ensuring the integrity of the information that labels provide to consumers is crucial to a sustainable livestock industry. That is why the Secretary of State and I want to ensure that unprocessed meat is clearly labelled with the country of origin and information on where the animal was born, raised and slaughtered. We also want to ensure that processed foods that are labelled as made in the UK show the origin of their main ingredients if they come from outside the UK. Again, that is to avoid any confusion for the consumer. I am very encouraged by the response that I have had from the food supply chain businesses in developing the principles in that voluntary code, but more work remains to be done to ensure clarity for consumers, and the Government have always made it clear that we reserve the right to legislate if we cannot achieve what we want voluntarily.
Tackling food waste is a Government priority. The Secretary of State has already announced a thorough review of all aspects of waste policy and delivery in England, including household and business waste and arrangements for recycling collection. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East referred to anaerobic digestion. We want to see a big increase in renewable energy from anaerobic digestion of both agricultural and human waste. We are working on the steps to achieve that through the rural development programme, which will knit in with the feed-in tariff system. DEFRA’s support for a sustainable livestock industry is, I believe, shown through its commitment of significant resources to research to improve our knowledge base of what works.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, among others, mentioned soya, but we need to be clear what we are talking about. We import something like 2.2 million tonnes of soya bean meal, and 0.8 million tonnes of soya beans—a total of 3 million tonnes. Of course, not all of that is for animal feed. Virtually all our processed food—soya is a major ingredient of vegetarian food—contains soya. Not all soya is fed to stock. In fact, about two thirds of all our manufactured food products contain derivatives of, or ingredients made from, soya. Nevertheless, the debate has focused on the livestock use of soya.
The 3 million tonnes should be seen in the context of current UK cropping and we must look at the implications of the ultimate objective of the Bill, which is to produce all our protein within the UK. A yield of 5 tonnes per hectare of the equivalent of soya—the nearest we have are dried peas and beans, which we already grow—is quite high, but with that assumption, the 3 million tonnes of soya imports equate to 600,000 hectares of British farmland. We currently grow about 1.8 million hectares of wheat, just over 1.1 million hectares of barley, 581,000 thousand hectares of rape and only 233,000 hectares of peas and beans. It does not take much working out to see that if we were to replace that soya import, our cropping practices would need to undergo a massive change, with the consequential increase in imports of whatever crop is displaced to grow some form of protein to replace soya.
What we are doing as a Government is to co-fund research with the livestock industry on the environmental consequences of replacing soya with home-grown legumes in diets—for pigs particularly—and on the life-cycle analysis of poultry production systems, on an analysis of nutrition regimes for ruminants to reduce greenhouse gases, and on work to improve the welfare and health of dairy cows, including in the large-scale units that we have debated at other times.
Mr Chope
Has my hon. Friend seen the report “Pastures New—A Sustainable Future for Meat and Dairy Farming”, produced by Friends of the Earth? In it, quoting research by the Royal Agricultural College, Friends of the Earth says that we could use 2.25 million hectares of land to provide crops as an alternative to soya imports, rather than the lower figure to which my hon. Friend referred.
Mr Paice
I do not think I have actually seen that figure, but if it is to be taken as the correct figure, that is half our arable land. So the increase in imports of all the crops that would be displaced by that crop would obviously be dramatic and would have other implications; we would probably have another Bill trying to stop that.
On top of the research that I referred to, we are committed to tackling the deforestation that the Bill rightly aims to reduce, and which has accompanied some soya production. But we must recognise that soya consumption is not all about livestock. DEFRA is leading a programme of work, with businesses and non-governmental organisations, on another major food ingredient that has not been debated this morning—palm oil. We want to support production without the forest footprint of replacing rain forest with palm oil production.
We are also working closely with our European and other international partners. Much has been made of Brazil; in particular we are working with that country to tackle the drivers of deforestation. We are also working with EU partners to tackle illegal logging, which destroys forests and biodiversity and contributes, as we know, to CO2 emissions.
Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)
I have attended this morning’s debate with a genuinely open mind, in accordance with the commitment that I gave to my constituents—we are very interested in the Bill. I suspect that what drives much of the sense of urgency of the Members who spoke in favour of the Bill, is a sense that we are hearing merely warm words and promises, and among working people everyone is a little concerned that those timelines will slip. The Minister has conceded that he agrees with a great deal of the sentiment behind the Bill. What reassurance can the people who support the sentiment behind the Bill have that progress will be made in a reasonably rapid time frame?
Mr Paice
I am grateful for that question, part of which I will come to in a few moments. First, let me say that the issue is not about the principle of ensuring that our livestock sector is more sustainable; the debate is about how we go about it—whether to adopt the highly regulatory approach proposed by the Bill, or to continue with the approach that, as has been said in all fairness, was begun under the previous Government—and continued and emphasised by the present Government—to achieve the aim with partnership working throughout the sector. A lot of progress is being made, and in a few moments I shall outline how I think the Bill could be counter-productive in achieving that.
I was saying that we are working closely with the EU, Brazil and others. In particular, bringing us right up to date, we made great strides forward at the recent conference in Nagoya, not only in agreeing targets for reducing the loss of habitats including forests, and for tackling forest degradation, but in making real progress on the links between climate change and biodiversity. The Government announced as part of the spending review that we will provide £2.9 billion towards tackling international climate change. A significant proportion of that will be used to address forestry issues, and that meets and goes beyond the commitments made at Copenhagen by the previous Government.
Kerry McCarthy
Could the Minister tell the House what conversations have taken place on this issue between DEFRA Ministers and Ministers in the Department of Energy and Climate Change? I was a bit concerned that when I raised this issue at yesterday’s DECC questions, the Minister who was answering did not seem to have the slightest idea that the Bill even existed. This is important in terms of putting the issue on the agenda at the international climate change talks.
Mr Paice
Obviously, I cannot comment on what may have taken place in the Chamber yesterday, but I assure the hon. Lady that those discussions do take place. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has engaged in a number of conversations with the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change about our stance, and did so before going to Nagoya, so we had an agreed Government position. Further discussions are taking place—some have taken place—prior to the meeting at Cancun in two or three weeks’ time. I can assure the hon. Lady that those discussions most definitely are taking place.
The £2.9 billion going towards tackling international climate change that I mentioned is obviously very significant, but the key international mechanism for tackling deforestation and ensuring that forestry contributes to our action on climate change is the REDD+ programme—reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation—in developing countries. Part of making that programme work will be an examination of all the drivers of deforestation, including forest conversion to agriculture. The progress that we made at Nagoya on ensuring that a successful REDD+ programme delivers benefits for biodiversity was a major breakthrough, in which the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs played a key role. As I have just said, we need to build on that at Cancun in a few weeks’ time.
In addition, I can tell the House that the Technology Strategy Board, in conjunction with DEFRA and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, is planning a call of up to £15 million for business-led applied research projects that will help to deliver a sustainable future supply of protein for the UK. As I announced last week, DEFRA and the devolved Administrations are committing £12.6 million to research to improve our understanding of greenhouse gas emissions from farms across the UK. At the same time, we are working with our partners in the Global Research Alliance of 30 countries to collaborate on research into agricultural greenhouse gas emission reductions, including from livestock.
It is important to emphasise that a range of different views about agricultural emissions still exist and that this is an extremely complicated field, because it involves many interacting purposes. For example, grassland, which has been the subject of a lot of discussion today, is itself a huge reservoir of carbon and so it is arguable that the more grass we have, the better. However, if ruminants graze that grass, they emit methane and so a balance needs to be worked out. We must also consider an issue that is very relevant to some of the conversations that have taken place in the Chamber this morning: intensive versus extensive. I am not advocating this necessarily, but it is part of the dilemma faced by the industry that if we keep stock in an enclosed building, we can then deal with the emissions. By contrast, if the stock are kept free range, the emissions are emitted into the atmosphere and we can do nothing about them. That is just part of the conundrum that we need to try to resolve, hence that further investment of £12.6 million that I announced last week.
The Government’s commitment to a sustainable future for UK farming is, as I have said, right at the top of our business programme. So it is very clear, particularly at a time of fiscal restraint. However, I suggest—this comes back to the point made in an intervention a few minutes ago—that if we were to adopt the Bill as it stands, we would find that much of it is completely undeliverable and unachievable. Expecting the Secretary of State “to ensure” certain things is an impossibility, because all these things fall way outside the Secretary of State’s real powers. The Bills states that it is the Secretary of State’s duty
“to ensure the sustainability of the livestock industry”
That is not just down to the Secretary of State; it is down to countless other businesses, individuals and so on. Clause 1(3) states that the Secretary of State
“must ensure that policies in relation to negotiations and other activities…including at the European Union, are consistent with sections 1(1) and 1(2).
I suggest that that, too, is impossible. Many other factors bear down on our negotiations, and giving the Secretary of State a duty
“to ensure that the steps taken in accordance with this Act do not lead to an increase in the proportion of meat consumed in the United Kingdom which is imported”
is clearly impossible. We live in an open market economy, thank goodness—I believe that the Opposition share that perception these days—and we could not, because of European and World Trade Organisation laws, simply put up the siege barriers and say, “We are not importing any meat.” That might be what Mr Putin has done about wheat, but it is not realistic to expect us to do it for meat.
I am afraid that some aspects of the Bill are clearly outwith what would be sensible legislation, which is one major reason why we oppose it. Another is that if the Secretary of State were to divert considerable DEFRA resources to do everything required by the Bill, that would slow down our progress. As I have tried to illustrate, we are making considerable progress in a range of ways and I want to drive that forward because I believe strongly in that agenda.
Mr Nuttall
Has the Department assessed the likely cost of trying to enforce the Bill’s provisions?
Mr Paice
The honest answer is no, but the costs would be considerable. In this time of major economic constraint, DEFRA clearly does not have the resources for this; a reduction in its overall budget has already been announced. Also, as my hon. Friend said in his excellent speech, the cost of the measures and of regulating them would have a considerable impact on the industry.
There are a number of reasons why the Bill is not the right way forward. I believe in the partnership approach of working with the industry that I have outlined. We are ready to show the necessary leadership and resolve to challenge the industry to act sustainably. That is the best way of producing the results to which we and the Bill aspire. Most of our farming leaders and the farming and food businesses they represent understand the Government’s resolve to ensure a sustainable future for livestock, farming and food.
We hope and expect the agricultural industry’s climate change task force to deliver its commitments to a greenhouse gas action plan with tangible measures for on-farm abatement. I hope that the plan will be published in the next few weeks. We will review it in 2012 and be ready to take the necessary steps should it seem unlikely to deliver the progress on farm-level abatement that we need.
We want to encourage all parts of the livestock industry to challenge themselves in thinking about the sustainability of their sectors and to set challenging goals for pro-environmental behaviours. In this time of restraint, and with the Government’s overriding priority of reducing the deficit, we need to focus resources on where they can make the most difference rather than on the statutory reporting and monitoring envisaged in the Bill.
Unsurprisingly, I repeat that the Government cannot support the Bill. Although its general sentiment is admirable, its terms are too broad, the duties it would impose on the Secretary of State are too ill defined and, indeed, undeliverable, and it is not consistent with the partnership approach that we want to engender. Let me return, therefore, to my earlier offer. Rather than impose additional layers of reporting, we would like to offer something substantive: our participation in a conference of interested parties in the first half of next year to take stock of the progress made by the UK livestock sectors in delivering sustainability objectives. I look to interested parties to set up and host the conference, but I give a commitment that either the Secretary of State or I will attend it. A year after the conference, DEFRA would report on the role of all parties with an interest in the sustainability of our livestock industry.
Ian Paisley
The conference proposal is valuable, but will the Minister ensure that it will be open to the devolved regions and organisations such as the Ulster Farmers Union?
Mr Nuttall
On the point about the guest list, bearing in mind the confusion that arose this morning about the extent and scope of the Bill in the United Kingdom, will the Minister confirm that he will invite interested parties from not just England, but Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland?
Mr Paice
I have just answered that point. I do not want to control the guest list, but I certainly think that the conference should be seen as a UK event.
Before I conclude, I want to refer to one or two comments made by hon. Friends. We have heard some good, solid speeches; my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North made a very solid speech. He was interrupted a couple of times for very relevant purposes. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) was, as we have very quickly come to learn, exceedingly perceptive, particularly about some of the shortcomings and illegalities of the Bill, to which I, too, referred. My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) referred, quite rightly, to the importance of biodiversity, but we need to look at what the Bill actually says, rather than at what we might imagine it could do, say or achieve. In this House, we are responsible for the detail of legislation. In my time here, far too many Bills have gone through without adequate scrutiny that would enable us to understand what they truly say. I stand second to nobody in recognising the importance of recognising biodiversity in our agricultural policies, but passing the Bill would not be of much assistance.
We heard a superb speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), the last surviving Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Minister in the House. He brought to the debate his tremendous knowledge of the developing world. To be fair, the hon. Member for Glasgow North East referred to agricultural growth as the main driver of economic growth there. My hon. Friends the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart), and for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), referred to the importance of agriculture to rural Britain, and to local food production.
I will conclude with one or two comments on the speech of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, who introduced the Bill. I mentioned that the bulk of soya and grain goes to pigs and poultry, a fact that I think had eluded him, judging by the way that he spoke. I want to make sure that a couple of statistics that he quoted are corrected; I am afraid that they were fundamentally wrong, and it would be irresponsible of me to leave them on the record unchallenged. He said that agriculture now uses 20 million tonnes more animal feed than it did 20 years ago. In fact, the figure is 2 million tonnes. He also said that it takes 20 kg of cereals to produce 1 kg of beef, but in fact it takes about 6 to 7 kg of cereal, or concentrate food, to produce 1 kg of beef; that is the real conversion rate. In any case, as I said earlier, no ruminants are fed entirely on grain and soya, because their digestive systems could not cope with that. Clearly, if one takes out the roughage—the long material that they are eating—the consumption of cereals goes down.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to the situation in Paraguay. I do not in any way want to diminish the importance of deforestation in Paraguay, but we do not import any soya from there, so the Bill would not have an impact on Paraguay. I think that I heard him say that we should not be feeding cereals to livestock at all, all of which would mean, as I said, that we would have no pigmeat or poultry meat in this country.
We have had a lot of debate, and this is an important issue. I repeat my congratulations to the hon. Gentleman on bringing the issue to the House. I do not in any way decry his having done that; it has been a valuable morning. I hope that I have been able to persuade hon. Members on both sides of the House that the Government are totally committed to ensuring, developing and improving the sustainability of our livestock industry, but the Bill is not the way to go about doing that. We are determined to proceed in the way that I described, working with our partners to make livestock production sustainable, without the need for the regulatory process suggested in the Bill.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman and others will accept, participate in, and welcome the constructive alternative way forward that I have already offered him. I am the first to admit that the proposals have been a matter of great debate in Government, because we share the fundamental objectives of what the Bill is trying to do. We would have liked to support it if we could, but after careful analysis, some of which I have shared with the House, I am afraid that we cannot do that. Nevertheless, the debate is worth while, and the Government remain determined to proceed with the overall issue.
Mr Chope
The hon. Gentleman is usurping the position that should be occupied by his hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South. I hope that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South will have a chance to respond to the debate and to explain to Members who are interested in the subject whether the Minister’s offer is a good one, and whether, on the basis of it, he wishes to seek leave to withdraw the Bill.
I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman if he wishes to tell me that he wants to withdraw the Bill, because we can then move on to the next business, but I cannot force him to intervene. I am giving him the opportunity to do so, but he is declining. The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) knows very well the procedures of the House and exactly what the Bill’s promoter and sponsors can and, perhaps, will do between now and half-past 2 if they do not want to accept the Minister’s offer.
Considering that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North spoke for an hour and a quarter, I am just getting into the beginnings of my contribution. I thought that it would be helpful not to make a speech de novo, but to make a speech that built on what my hon. Friend the Minister said. We are meant to be having a debate rather than a dialogue of the deaf, and it is a pity that at the moment there is no indication that any more Opposition Members want to engage in it.
My hon. Friend the Minister went on to say that he was keen to ensure that the Government introduce mandatory standards for the public procurement of food, but I am not sure that I am. I can understand the desire in relation to Departments, but not in relation to going further and trying to impose such a demand on the whole public sector.
Mr Paice
If I did not make it clear at the time to my hon. Friend, I should like to clarify the Government’s proposal. The guidelines would be mandatory on central Government and their agencies; local government and other aspects of the public sector would be encouraged to adopt them, but they would not be mandated.
Mr Chope
I am most encouraged by my hon. Friend’s response. I am glad that he recognises that it would be a mistake to impose on local government and other parts of the public sector.
My hon. Friend went on to talk about labelling. I agree wholeheartedly that we should try to get better labelling, but I fear that unless we can renegotiate our position in relation to the European Union, we will not be able to do that as easily or quickly as my hon. Friend would like.
I still do not understand why we are not able to feed food waste to pigs, as we always used to. There was an unnecessary health scare about all that, and it would surely be much better if we fed our food waste to pigs, rather than putting it into landfill or disposing of it in some other way. I hope that in due course the Government will readdress that issue.
Pigs will eat almost anything. As you may recall, Mr Deputy Speaker, it was not that long ago that a citizen was murdered in Wimbledon and it was discovered that his body had been fed to pigs. I am sure that you will be advised that that point is far outside the remit of the Bill, and, funnily enough, dealing with such issues will not be one of the burdens put on the Minister if the Bill passes into law. That is fair enough. I am illustrating the point that pigs are omnivores. It is a pity that we do not allow pigs to devour food waste and thereby the reduce the amount of soya that they consume.