Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Grand Committee

To conclude, I welcome the scrutiny of your Lordships. My noble friend Lord Forsyth’s amendments were articulated by my noble friend Lord Hamilton—my noble friend Lord Forsyth asked me to state on the record his apology for not being here, but he obviously has a very good reason for that—and I hope noble Lords will be content not to press their amendments.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

My Lords, I have received requests to speak after the Minister from five noble Lords. First, I call the noble Lord, Lord Marland.

[Lord Marland (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Committee for allowing me to speak, and to the Minister. I attended all of Second Reading but did not choose to speak; I am very grateful to be allowed to now.

I do not envy my noble friend the Minister taking this Bill through the Lords. Clearly, it has united all sides in condemnation of the make-up, extent and cost of the committee and led to questions of whether it is a quango or a regulator committee. To date, he has not allayed our fears on that. I should be grateful if he would let us know when he intends to do so, as he alluded to in his remarks.

He also mentioned that funding will be out of the existing Defra budget. Is that an increased budget? That does not tell us whether the budget will be increased to fulfil this funding, and he has not conceded any information on that.

I am struck and concerned by his statement that the United Kingdom is the most highly regulated country in the world in this area. We are a nation of animal lovers and we have traditionally treated our animals extremely humanely, but this obsession with overregulation and making us the most regulated in the world must be a terrible threat to our farming community as it struggles against the continual burden of regulation put on it.

Therefore, my noble friends who have raised these questions are quite right to challenge the Minister on the make-up of the committee. At what point do we stop imposing regulation on our farming community? Many will have heard the outcry from the farming community after the Australian trade deal, complaining that Australia is less regulated than our community. It makes it impossible for our farmers to export if they are not on, as they call it, a level playing field. I further amplify the comments of my noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom, who rightly said that this is gold-plating the European Union’s welfare arrangements. Again, at what point do we cease to gold-plate products of something that the majority of the country decided to leave: the European Union?

As I said, I do not envy the Minister for taking on the Bill. He is a farmer himself, and a countryman to boot, but I fear that, unless strong terms of reference are imposed on the committee, we will end up destroying our countryside pursuits and making life virtually impossible for our farming and fishing community in future. I hope that, as the Bill makes its passage, he will be able to assure us—rather more, I am afraid, than he has today. I am happy to meet him afterwards to discuss it, or to receive a letter from him, if he so wishes.

I am grateful to the Minister and the Committee for allowing me to speak in this break.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

On that point, I just point out to Members of the Committee that speeches after the Minister are primarily for points of elucidation.

--- Later in debate ---

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

My Lords, we will have a five-minute adjournment of the Committee.

Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (Amendment) Order 2020

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the owner of 40 acres of woodland registered with the Forestry Commission, the owner of a small vineyard of 100 vines and a member of the winegrowers’ association.

I want to focus on the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board regulations. It is not immediately obvious from paragraph 7.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum what horticulture is doing here. Is there an equivalent measure for horticulture to the statements made about animal movement? Where does the arboreal dimension fit into this? Does the instrument cover poultry? Poultry is not mentioned. Does it cover bees? Both are important parts of livestock more broadly for people in the UK.

I do not yet read anywhere that we are picking up the opportunity that this country has with horticulture. One way or the other, things will change in a few weeks. We know the history of horticulture in the UK. We have lost out to Holland, principally because of the cost of energy. You only have to drive round Bedfordshire and associated counties that were big in horticulture to notice a substantial reduction. There is a huge, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for import substitution, so that we can see better performance from horticulture and pick up on the development work that was being done and may still be done on fruit trees and fruit bushes, as well as vegetables in general—all geared up to import substitution. While I am not clear where the horticulture sector is outlined in the document, it seems relevant, as horticulture is mentioned in the title.

The document talks about the Scottish Government and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs. Having been deeply involved in the internal market Bill and the challenges for liaison between the centre and the devolved Governments, I would like to know what happens if the Scottish Government or the Northern Irish department of agriculture decide to disagree with the centre on their own unique identification codes. Is there a mechanism whereby difficulties in this area can be put to rest?

Broadly in this area, the department has put out a helpful leaflet. I refer in particular to the annexe summary of new schemes on page 22, which I studied over the weekend. On the Forestry Commission incentives, applications are apparently open all year. Are these the existing ones, which have been going for a long time? The leaflet says that they start in 2020. As a registered owner, I am not aware of having received any communication from the Forestry Commission about new incentives.

The tree health pilot, which the Minister has mentioned before, is important because of the problems with ash and elm. It starts in October next year. When will this be communicated fully? Are we sticking to April 2021, as the document says? On the tree health scheme, which is also important, I see that further information is not expected until 2024. It is difficult to understand why the delay should be so long.

The World Trade Organization regulations are important. There is not a lot to ask other than to pick up on one point. We are a founding member of the WTO, which I hope is to our benefit. On paragraph 6.1, what has been the reaction from the devolved assemblies to the amber box support? If there is a difference of opinion, who will make the decision? It is not entirely clear from the document. Finally, I would be grateful for an explanation in more depth of paragraph 6.4, which also refers to disagreements. That is all I want to say. I do not want to make any reference to the direct payments.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

I call the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Bhatia. Oh, Lord Bhatia, we cannot hear you. We will go to the next speaker and try to come back to you if we possibly can. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to these three statutory instruments and apologise for missing the briefing which he so kindly provided. The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (Amendment) Order 2020 is very short and concise. It moves the functions of identification, movement and health of animals and allocating identification codes from the AHDB to a new livestock information service, the LIS.

It is essential that animals should be able to move around and be accurately tracked. The LIS will make it much easier to track animals as they will all be on one database, instead of three separate databases under the current AHDB. However, if there are 165,000 keepers of farmed livestock and nearly 60,000 keep more than one species, that is a lot of livestock being combined from three databases into one. Has this database been fully tested? In other words: does it work? While it is extremely advantageous for farmers to visit only one database to look at their cattle, pigs and sheep instead of one for each species, it will be necessary that the computer systems work. Is Livestock Information Ltd a private company, or does it operate under the auspices of Defra? Track and trace for animals is vital to prevent disease outbreaks and controlling disease once outbreaks have occurred. Like so many things in life, if the computer system fails then chaos results. I would be grateful for the Minister’s reassurance on this point.

The Direct Payments to Farmers (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 ensure that farmers will receive their direct payments from January 2021 and set out financial ceilings used to calculate farmers’ direct payments. However, I could find no information on what these ceilings were in the actual instrument. As with a lot of statutory instruments, unless you have the original legislation in front of you it is very difficult to interpret what is proposed. The devolved Administrations have their own legislation which deals with these issues, so this SI relates solely to England. Can the Minister say whether after January 2021 all four Administrations, including England, will pay their farmers at the same rate for the same activities? If not, I foresee difficulties with cross-border trade.

The direct payment covers basic payments, greening payments and young farmer payments. It is my understanding that the direct payments are on a sliding scale and reduce over the period of the transition from CAP to ELMS, but there is no mention of this in the instrument, which states that the seven-year transition information is not covered in this SI. Where will this sliding scale of support under the withdrawal from direct payments be covered?

The Government have committed to maintain the same financial support for farmers as they previously enjoyed, at £1.8 billion annually. I am pleased to note that in future payments will not be made in euros, so farmers will not be subject to the vagaries of exchange rates. However, in paragraph 7.7 of the Explanatory Memorandum, the text states that the SI

“removes the need for recipients of Direct Payments to meet ‘active farmer’ requirements”.

What is meant by “active farmer”? Does this mean that an inactive farmer—one who no longer manages land or livestock—will receive a direct payment?

The World Trade Organisation Agreement on Agriculture (Domestic Support) Regulations 2020 ensure that the UK continues to comply with its obligations under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, the AoA. This ensures reductions in its aggregate measurement of support, a key measure used by the WTO to assess domestic support for agricultural commodities. This SI also deals with UK obligations on “amber box” payments with trade-distorting effects, to which the Minister has referred. Defra says that this instrument specifies the amounts of amber box payments that may be given in each country of the UK; they are limited under the AoA, and the aim is to reduce them over time. The Secondary Legislation and Scrutiny Committee has published a paragraph on this instrument, which allows for each UK Administration to design and implement their own agricultural support schemes within an amber box spending envelope set by this instrument.

I would like to ask the Minister about the limits of support at Paragraph 4 of the instrument, which refers to how the total sum is calculated but does not give any indication of what the total will be. However, it states that England will get 49.2%, Northern Ireland 7.49%, Scotland 12.6%, and Wales 6.83%. This does not include the reserve. Are these percentages permanent or will they change each year? I assume these percentages are for the year 2021, but can the Minister please confirm?

The instrument also indicated that spending from the reserve may be used on amber box domestic support in a Crown dependency. Does this include all Crown dependencies or only some? I look forward to the Minister’s response to my questions and those of other noble Lords taking part in this debate.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

My Lords, after the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, I shall call the noble Lord, Lord Bhatia, to speak.

World Trade Organisation Agreement on Agriculture (Domestic Support) Regulations 2020

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

The Grand Committee stands adjourned until 5 pm. I remind Members to sanitise their desks and chairs before leaving the Room.

Garden Centres

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 29th April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I thank the noble Baroness. Obviously, we want to keep this under particular review. I am very sympathetic to all the points that noble Lords have made, which is why I am working closely with the HTA so that, when it is deemed appropriate, we can reopen garden centres as soon as possible.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, garden centres play a great parte in the supply of fruit and vegetable plants for the whole of this year; that is why it is important that they are open now. Local authorities and the police have powers under the emergency legislation to shut down any business that does not comply with Covid health protections. Why, then, cannot the garden centres open and be treated just the same as all the other important businesses?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I understand what the noble Baroness is saying. That is why, as I said, I have been very keen to address this, and why we have presented the traders’ protocol on social distancing to Public Health England, so that when there is a review, I can feel confident in saying that the HTA has a very strong protocol.