Draft Common Agricultural Policy (Cross-Compliance Exemptions and Transitional Regulation) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2022
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
Read Full debate
The Chair
Before I call the Minister to move the motion, I should say that, given the heat, if Members would like to take their jackets off or loosen or take off their ties, I would have no problem with that; and please stay hydrated.
The Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food (Victoria Prentis)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Common Agricultural Policy (Cross-Compliance Exemptions and Transitional Regulation) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2022.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. These regulations apply to retained EU law relating to the common agricultural policy, including the cross-compliance rules, which farmers and land managers must follow if they are claiming certain rural payments. This SI is entirely technical; it makes no policy changes to retained EU law and makes no provision for future funding. It changes references to the European Commission, member states, EU funding and EU policies, and so on, to the national institutions that we now use, having left the EU. These would, if possible, have been amended or removed from the statute book by our exit SIs in 2020, had the EU regulation that introduced them been made in time. Sadly, it was only published and brought into force in December 2020, so that was not possible.
The instrument also amends schedule 3 to the Common Agricultural Policy (Control and Enforcement, Cross-Compliance, Scrutiny of Transactions and Appeals) Regulations 2014, which set out the circumstances under which a breach of the cross-compliance rules is dealt with. This SI simply extends the list of management agreements and measures, ensuring that farmers who engage in our new schemes are not placed at unfair risk of penalisation for complying with some of the requirements. The instrument has been developed in close consultation with the devolved Administrations and has been laid before Parliament with their consent. It does no more than is appropriate to remove or correct certain inoperable European references and cross-compliance exemptions, and is technical in nature. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Victoria Prentis
The confusion in the House of Lords was one of semantics. Cross-compliance, in the sense that we use it as farmers and at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, is the compliance regime that stems from the common agricultural policy. Under our new future funding schemes there will be new compliance procedures, but strictly speaking they are not cross-compliance. I hope that distinction makes sense. The position is that cross-compliance, in the traditional sense of the terminology, will end when CAP direct payments are phased out and conclude. We will of course have a new risk-based inspection regime.
Daniel Zeichner
That it is probably what I expected the Minister to say. My one concern, which I raised during the passage of the Agriculture Act 2020, is that there is a danger that we will end up loosening our environmental protections. I would really welcome an assurance from the Minister that cross-compliance will be replaced by an equally rigorous but hopefully less bureaucratic and pernickety system.
Victoria Prentis
Absolutely. The whole tenor of the new schemes is about working with farmers—the terminology that I have used frequently to explain it to the hon. Gentleman is that we are looking more at carrots and less at sticks—but there will of course be a sensible, risk-based and proportionate inspection regime where that is necessary.
The purpose of the new schemes is to bring farmers into more regenerative farming and a more environmentally friendly way of both producing the food that we need and supporting our environmental and carbon capture ambitions. I think the hon. Gentleman knows and agrees with that. The whole tenor of the reforms is to move the agricultural world into a more sustainable place. With that in mind, it is of course important that we make sure that there is compliance—to use the word in its normal sense—with our new rules and regulations. I think I have dealt with the points raised, so I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.