Agriculture Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I offer the Green group’s support for Amendments 155 to 157 and thank the noble Lords who tabled them and supported them. This debate and the questions have brought out the political impact of the relatively low number of votes in the countryside. We have seen just this morning, with the report on the distribution of the Government’s regeneration fund before the last election, how, since we do not have a rules-based system such as the EU’s whereby funds are distributed to the areas that are most disadvantaged and most in need, it very much depends on the Government’s view of where such money should go.

This debate has focused a lot on keeping what we have in the countryside: alternative businesses, non-farm businesses and alternative sources of revenue for farmers. But what is the Government’s vision for the countryside —where do they see money going, say, from the UK shared prosperity fund? Do the Government see the countryside as a place where there can be large numbers of new, growing, farming, food-producing businesses, and large numbers of good jobs—not simply pickers who are casual workers coming in for a couple of months and then going away again having lived in caravans, but people who can make their lives in the countryside? Is that the kind of vision of a horticulture-rich, healthy food-growing countryside—tying together many of our debates from last year—that the Government have?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the vision is for a prosperous rural economy, which obviously includes food production and agriculture. However, a whole range of communities form the rural economy. We want to ensure that all rural dwellers have the same opportunities. I have to say that very few industries have been promised that they will retain the same annual contribution from the taxpayer for the whole of this Parliament; sometimes noble Lords forget that in some of their commentary. That is most exceptional, and it shows that the Government support farmers and rural communities. That is of course why there is a very significant investment in the broadband structure. Therefore, there is a considerable vision for a prosperous, skilled and innovative agricultural sector within a broader rural economy.

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[Baroness Rock [V]]

My Lords, again I declare my interests as a director of a tenant farming enterprise. I support Amendment 237 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I was pleased to add my name to Amendments 238 and 243 to 246. I welcome the clear intention to ensure that tenants are not excluded from financial assistance schemes.

Amendment 238 seeks only to ensure that all potential circumstances that could arise for a tenant to need their landlord’s consent are covered. Some schemes, by their nature, require tenants to seek the consent of their landlords, regardless of legislation or their contracts of tenancy. Those individuals would not be able to use the provisions of this legislation to object to a landlord’s refusal, in those circumstances. This amendment merely extends the opportunity for reasonable objection to apply to any and all situations where the landlord’s consent is required. The amendment is not seeking to expand the remit of the legislation beyond what the Government intend, just to ensure that no one is left out of being able to use this provision.

I welcome the provisions of Schedule 3, in particular those allowing tenants to object to a landlord’s refusal to grant consent to enter a financial assistance scheme, but the exclusion of farm business tenants is a mistake. By their short-term nature, restrictive terms and high levels of rent, FBTs deserve the protection of this legislation. Over time, FBTs will become the major way in which non-landowners become farmers, and it is important that the legislative basis for their occupation is secure. As the Government rightly move towards a new mechanism to support farm productivity gains and public goods, it would be tragic if FBTs had no recourse against unreasonable landlords who refuse consent for them to be part of that new direction of travel.

I recognise that there is a balance between ensuring that we do not disincentivise landlords and ensuring that tenants have sufficient opportunities to take part in new schemes. However, given the restrictive terms of many FBTs and the lack of impetus to improve them in the marketplace, the balance should rightly ensure fair scheme access for all tenants.

While it is government policy to ensure long-term FBTs, it is disappointing that the Bill does not contain the provisions to assist with this that were proposed by the Tenancy Reform Industry Group—TRIG— which formed part of the Government’s consultation. Amendment 246 rectifies this. The marketplace does not currently deliver a sufficient number of long-term FBTs and the Government could do more to promote their use. These provisions should provide comfort to landlords who have to deal with tenants who breach the terms of the agreements or when land is required back for non-agricultural use, planning consent for change of use having been obtained. While these new provisions will have direct benefit for landlords, who are prepared to let for longer periods, they will provide indirect benefit to the tenanted sector as a whole, by providing scope for a greater degree of longer-term tenancies.

Finally, on Amendments 243 and 244, many successful businesses are family enterprises, no more so than in agriculture. Tenancy succession provisions ensure the longevity of farming businesses, and it is right that there should be eligibility criteria for who can succeed to a tenancy. Other bits of the Bill speak to that issue. One area that is limiting for many farm businesses with succession rights is the close relative test. Often it is nephews, nieces and grandchildren who are involved in the farm, rather than the children of the retiring or deceased tenant. It is important to recognise that these wider members of a family farm may be the most appropriate individuals to succeed. This issue was considered by TRIG and formed part of the Government’s consultation on agricultural tenancies.

The tenanted sector is responsible for farming at least one-third of the agricultural area of England and Wales. We must ensure that tenant farmers are able to participate fully in schemes to contribute to the future of farming.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Rock, and to echo many of the sentiments she expressed on Amendment 246, to which my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has attached her name. I will speak briefly to Amendments 158 and 159. Amendment 158 is on county farms, which is something that we have heard discussed broadly, its importance stressed by many sides, so I will not detain the Committee on that.

I want particularly to address Amendment 159, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. This in many ways addresses the question I put to the Minister after the previous group of amendments. Do we perceive our countryside as a place where we can see a growth of a different kind of business and economy—strong local economies, rich communities of small independent businesses producing food and providing services for those businesses? The vision set out by the noble Earl in this amendment reflects some very exciting work that is being done in Wales. We are seeing exciting experiments and developments in the devolved Administrations that could be transferred to England. That is the idea of One Planet Living: that it is possible to create developments that meet our environmental, social and economic goals and are different from what has gone before, which may not increase the concentration of land ownership, but may create opportunities for small independent landowners, businesses, tenants and people to operate different kinds of businesses, in different ways.

I do not need to tell your Lordships that land ownership in England is incredibly concentrated. We have a situation in which half of England is owned by less than 1% of its population. If we were to share the land of England around the whole population, everyone would get half an acre each. In the light of Covid-19, we may see that people wish to explore different ways of living, different kinds of businesses, different ways to work and support themselves, and different ways to work in communities. This amendment is an exciting possibility and way of doing that. I commend it to the Committee.

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[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, it is a real privilege to take part in the debate on this group of amendments, which has produced some of the most interesting and outstanding speeches in the whole of this Committee stage; the Government may think that some of them were a little long but I think that people can be excused if they are really good.

I signed the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts. I must say, when I did so, I did not have a clue about what he was going to make of his amendment and what he was going to say. His speech is one of those that I want to go back to and read carefully tomorrow. It was quite outstanding and put some of the problems that we have been talking about in a wider geographical and longer-term context. I am pleased that I signed that amendment.

I am also pleased that I signed the amendment tabled by my long-standing friend, the noble Lord, Lord Hain, who, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, introduced the concept of food insecurity as opposed to food security. It is an absolute scandal, as I have already said in Committee, that we are arguably the fifth or sixth-richest country in the world—one of the richest countries ever in the world—and we have food banks. Something is seriously wrong. I remember that, when I was quite young, in the working class district I grew up in, it was well known that, in the households, the wife would go without food to feed the husband, who was the wage-earner. The vital thing was that that wage continued. Nowadays, even in the town I live in, Colne—near where I represent on the council—we know that young women are going without enough food in order to feed their children. This is 2020. This country has never been as rich as it is now, yet this is going on. Something is seriously wrong. I would say that something has to be done about it, but that is a cliché, I know.

I was very pleased to sign the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady Parminter about food waste. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, had, I think, four apocalyptic subheadings in his speech, and one was shortage of food. The amount of food wasted in this country—in all the developed world—is absolutely shocking. It happens on the farm; in production, to some extent; in the supermarkets, which are getting a bit better but it still happens there; and in the hospitality industry. People are buying too much food and throwing appalling amounts away without even putting it on a plate, and people are putting too much on their plates and throwing half away. The amount of food wasted in households is a disgrace. I was a war baby and it is hard-wired inside my head that if the food is on the plate, you damn well eat it. Sending food back on a plate, even if I hate it and it is horrible, is something I find very difficult to do, because that was hard-wired into me in the first 10 years of my life. Nowadays, people do it all the time and do not think anything about it. We have to get back to the idea that you buy food, you cook food, you eat that food, and you do not eat too much—you cook the appropriate amount. This is very important. If we are talking about government propaganda exercises, which they seem to be heavily into at the moment, that is one that they might take on in a big way.

We have been told that we are leaving the European Union—the common market, the single market and the trade area—to have control over our own borders. Then we get this Bill, which is about providing farmers with sufficient income and providing sufficient food and food security and so on. The Bill gives the Government all these powers but, as the noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Whitty, and many others keep saying, we do not know what the Government’s policy is for using these new powers that they will have. We do not know if, as far as trade is concerned, they will go for open borders and cheaper food. If that happens, how will they support the farmers? We do not know whether they will encourage more expensive and higher-quality food and keep the imports out. We have no idea. We know that some members of the Conservative Party are very pro-farmer and very worried, but we know that lots of others want us to be a buccaneering, free-trading country and want us to go back to the repeal of the Corn Laws and so on. Until we know the answers to those questions, we do not really know how this Agriculture Bill will pan out. It is very unsatisfactory that we are providing the Government with the framework, but it is in a vacuum.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle [V]]

My Lords, I begin by referring to Amendment 168, which appears under my name on the Marshalled List, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for her support for it. I have already referred to the many environmental and health advantages of plant-based foods, but this amendment refers specifically to the issue of food security.

I refer noble Lords to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2019 report, The State of the World’s Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture. It points out that nine species are responsible for two-thirds of the world’s crops, and 40 types of livestock produce nearly all the meat, milk and eggs. We suffer from a similar lack of diversity in the UK. A handful of crops dominate our land, as you see when you travel around the country. Not having crop diversity also means that you do not have the variety of insects and microbes—the suite of ecosystems that would accompany different crops. There is also the huge risk of one disease or bad season for a particular crop having a huge impact. But moving more into plant-based foods—perennial crops, tree crops, nuts and fruits—creates a more diverse and secure system, in terms of the first sort of food security identified by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. Moving towards plant-based foods gives you a more diverse and secure food supply.

I refer also to Amendment 169, which appears under the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and which I was pleased to sign. It refers to the issue of food waste, which many noble Lords have already referred to, and demands a report from the Government on food waste and surplus. It would be a crucial step forward that I hope the Government will be prepared to accept. We have a situation where many sides of the House and many parts of the country agree that food waste is a problem, but action has chiefly come from independent charities and community groups. FareShare, for example, rescues huge quantities—but still a tiny percentage—of the food from supermarkets that is largely going to waste, and reaches 11,000 charities and community groups around the country.

That brings me to the crucial way in which waste interrelates with food security in the second sense referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, which is people being able to afford the food. A shocking figure from FareShare is that half of the people accessing its food have recently gone a day without food before being able to access that food that has been rescued. I will also mention the Real Junk Food Project, which started just up the road from me in Leeds and has spread to 120 projects in seven countries. We cannot keep relying on such groups to act on food waste; this needs to happen at a government level.

I also refer to Amendment 171 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, signed by my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. There is a crucial point to be made about this: it says that the Government must have targets for food security. We have addressed, in many different contexts, the fact that the Government cannot just have powers; they need to have duties. As the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, said, this is possibly one of the most important areas of the Bill. This has to be a duty, not just a power to act.

This brings me to Amendment 162 on annual reports. I shall refer noble Lords to what is now an old report, from 2008, but still worth looking at: Nine Meals from Anarchy from the New Economics Foundation. Noble Lords may recall the fuel blockade, another occasion on which our shelves suddenly emptied. We have no idea when challenges, risks and sudden changes in the world situation will occur. Many noble Lords have talked about the climate emergency, but they could be natural, political or economic, and all of those things are risks that arise very quickly, so I think annual reports are the way to go.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 16th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

I now call the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, will speak after the noble Earl, Lord Devon.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, and to note that she is reflecting the support that is to be found on all sides of your Lordships’ House for the inclusion of the climate emergency in the Bill. I thank the Minister for her responses thus far. She brandished the “we have legally binding targets” stick that the Government very much like to bring out. I point out that we also have a Fixed-term Parliaments Act which supposedly sets the date of elections every five years—and we have had three elections in the past five years.

What we need is action. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said, pointing to the report that has just come out from the independent Committee on Climate Change, we have not had, and do not have in mind, anything like the action that we need. The Minister quoted a 2019 report from the same committee pointing out the difficulties of making agriculture net-zero carbon. But the National Farmers’ Union, which is representative of many farmers in this country, particularly the larger ones, has set that target for itself. It is therefore surprising that the Government are lagging behind the farmers and are perhaps in conflict on yet another subject with what might traditionally have been seen as their natural constituency.

There are a number of amendments in this group, but it will not surprise your Lordships’ House to know that my favourite is Amendment 274, which was tabled by my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and is backed by the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge. This amendment goes furthest and says that we must ensure that we meet our legally binding target under Paris and that we need real action in six months’ time. I also commend the elements in Amendment 272 about working with the devolved Administrations. That is a very strong element that I hope the Government will also take forward.

When we were last in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, said that politics,

“is not the stuff of fundamental legislation but for the political hustings.”—[Official Report, 14/7/20; col. 1626.]

I am not sure whether the noble Lord would consider tackling the climate emergency—the existential threat that is facing us all—politics, but it is crucial to this Agriculture Bill and it has to be there.

I very much hope that we will hear in coming days and weeks a more conciliatory approach from the Government on this. They often talk about following the science; the science is that we need action. We have a special role as the chair of the—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)]

Can I ask the noble Baroness to wait a moment? I think it would be a courtesy to the Committee if the noble Baroness could keep remarks to a short intervention. She is speaking after the Minister and I think it would be polite if she were to ask the noble Baroness the Minister a question, rather than making a speech.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle [V]]

I thank the noble Lord for his comment. I was coming to my last sentence, which is this: does the Minister acknowledge that there is support from all sides of your Lordships’ House for including a commitment to climate change action in the Bill? Will she and the Government at least go away and think again?

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Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

90: Clause 1, page 3, line 5, leave out “or plants” and insert “, plants or fungi”

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle [V]]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 90, I will also speak to Amendments 196 and 206 in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, which concern animal welfare and which I commend to the Committee, and Amendment 207, which concerns the role of the Groceries Code Adjudicator.

I shall speak to Amendments 90, 184, 188, 189, 286, 287, 288, 292, 293 and 294; I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for her support on them. They are all about references to fungi. I have to credit the campaigning group Plantlife, which identified this issue for me and did all the fine-comb work to produce these amendments. I feel that I am contributing to successful answers to pub quizzes up and down the land in saying that there are three kingdoms in the living world—plants, animals and fungi—which together make up the eukaryotes: the organisms with complex cells with features such as mitochondria and nuclei. In fact, fungi are closer to animals than plants. They are not producers of energy but use external sources of it; indeed, the world would soon be covered in undigested waste if they did not.

On many occasions in your Lordships’ House, I say, tongue in cheek, “I am sure that the Government will agree with me,” but in this case I say it with absolute sincerity. I am sure that the Government want our legislation to be scientifically literate. As this legislation currently says, “‘plants’ includes fungi”, it is not. It is like saying, “For ‘apples’, read ‘pineapples’”. That is very easy to fix—and would, I believe, have the added virtue of legal clarity. I am sure that we all recall the arguments about the classification of Jaffa Cakes as cakes or biscuits with regard to VAT. We do not want to see similar arguments in relation to support under this Bill. This Committee must consider why we currently have such confusion. The importance of fungi is grossly understated and still little understood.

I outsourced this speech in part to social media, where mycologists leapt in to offer some suggestions. To start with the familiar, I point your Lordships to fly agaric, the red and white fairy tale favourite, but until mycologists started talking to me, I did not realise how crucial it is, to the growth of birch trees in particular. I also cannot resist noting Phallus impudicus—I leave noble Lords to look up its common name—which is thought to have a close ecological relationship with badger setts. Its scent attracts blow-flies that quickly clean up the bodies of badgers, which most typically die underground—unless there is a badger cull, of course. I note that up to a third of plants’ products of photosynthesis feed fungi and bacteria in the soil. For example, relationships between bacteria help mycorrhizal fungi to use their hyphae to seek out and scavenge particularly biologically valuable elements such as phosphorus from rocks or decaying organic matter.

These are immensely complex and little-understood natural systems. Other noble Lords have said that they imagine the countryside operating like a giant, human-directed machine, with robots buzzing around and everything controlled by chemical application and genetic modification. I would point to the complexities I just outlined to illustrate how faulty that vision is. We do not understand all that, but we do understand the basic biology and we can get it right in the Bill. I look forward to the Minister’s response and beg to move.

[The Earl of Caithness [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 177, 179, 180, 182, 186, 188, 190, 191, 192, 193 and 194, which are in my name. We are moving away from fungi, but I say this to my noble friend the Minister: it is not helpful to group such a mass of contradictory and different issues together. My amendments deal with the supply chain and the collection and processing of data, which are rather different to what the noble Baroness was just talking about.

The Bill has incorporated some safeguards around the collection and processing of data to ensure that it is clear how information will be used and how it could be used in accordance with data protection legislation. However, I still have concerns that not all the purposes for which information can be processed relate directly to improving supply chain transparency or supporting the development of risk management tools to help farmers to manage volatility. I therefore want to see these purposes drafted in a more focused way to ensure that they achieve the legitimate aims of improving transparency and managing volatility.

The purpose for which information can be processed under this clause should be linked directly to the overarching objective of improving fairness and transparency in the supply chain. The requirements to provide information will inevitably lead to an increased administrative burden for businesses, and it is therefore important that any information collected is focused on helping those in the agri-food supply chain to make improvements—hence the need for Amendment 177.

Turning to Amendment 190, the Bill as currently drafted provides for information to be processed for wider environmental and waste purposes which do not link specifically to assisting those in the agri-food supply chain. This amendment would focus the processing of environmental and waste information and avoid it being used to pursue wider environmental objectives more appropriately pursued under other legislation such as the Environment Bill. It would enable the Government to collect the kind of information they have stated they are interested in, but would curtail the use of the provisions for purposes which go beyond specific issues in the agri-food supply chain in future.

The Minister will know that the data collection provisions are welcomed by farmers. They should be used in a focused and proportionate way to ensure that the additional administrative burden placed on businesses directly improves the fairness and transparency of the agri-food supply chain. Most of us will be able to remember the days when MAFF was notorious for gold-plating regulations. Therefore, it is very important that these regulations and this part of the Bill are sensibly drafted so as not to impinge too much on farmers.

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[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I wish that the noble and learned Lord had given me those definitions before I replied, because it would have helped the noble Baroness even further.

On our definition, I specifically mentioned Clause 22(6) and the schedules that contain “fungi”. As I said, I can confirm that in Clause 1, which is about wild fungi and habitat, “fungi” covers plants and fungi, as it does throughout the Bill. My lawyers’ interpretation is that fungi are included.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle [V]]

I thank the Minister for his usual comprehensive and precise response to what is, as noble Lords have reflected, a hugely diverse range of amendments.

I do not intend to attempt to sum them all up, but I want to respond specifically to the noble and learned Lord who just intervened. My academic background is as a scientist. If the law can be scientifically accurate, reflecting modern understanding, many people might think that that is a good thing. I hope that the Minister will go away and talk to his officials and perhaps reflect on how many scientists there are in the Bill drafting team.

As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said in his interesting intervention, this is an issue of accurate language. As a feminist, I might come back to the other issues he raised with regard to the House another time, but not today.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, for their support. Reflecting briefly on the animal welfare provisions, some of which were supported by my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, came up with an interesting proposal in suggesting that there could be an animal welfare oversight body—something like the Groceries Code Adjudicator. Perhaps we can take that away and look at it in future.

I welcome the Minister’s commitment to close consultation with groups concerned with animal welfare in the regulations. I am sure that we look forward to seeing that, but most of the amendments in this group relate in some way or another to fair dealing and the problem of our current distribution system. The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, was hugely powerful when he talked about how the supermarkets making massive profits from the current tragic situation bore down on smaller suppliers and producers. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, stressed how we need joined-up thinking in ensuring fair dealing. I welcome what the Minister said about consulting the farming and growing sector in this area.

That sums up where we are. We have all done a great deal of work. Perhaps we will come back to some of this but, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 90 withdrawn.

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[Lord Lucas [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 132 in my name. These plans are the fundamental basis for planning farming in this country. It is really not acceptable that the Government should be allowed to let a plan almost expire and then introduce a new one. How does that allow farmers to plan properly? I know that they will not get it under these circumstances, in the first iteration, but thereafter they deserve two years’ notice of changes that will be made between one plan and the next.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle [V]]

My Lords, I associate the Green group with the very useful amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about transparency and accountability, and Amendments 131 and 133 from the noble Earl, Lord Devon. He displayed a touching faith in the regularity of the electoral cycle in his comments, but none the less a seven-year timeframe is much more realistic.

I will speak primarily to Amendment 112 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, to which I was pleased to add my name. This is a simple and practical amendment which says that financial assistance should be rolled over if it is not spent in one year. The noble Lord referred to the risk of funding going down if it is not spent. There is the other risk—as I am sure Members of your Lordships’ House will know, having spent much time over their lives on committees—of the rush that often happens at the end of the year to spend money before it runs out or disappears. That is something we do not want to see happening and do not want to encourage. Thinking particularly about farming and growing, dependence on the weather will mean that sometimes things simply cannot be done in a particular year.

I was also pleased to add my name to Amendment 227, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. She has not yet had an opportunity to speak to that amendment, which is also backed by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I briefly reflect that this calls for a land use strategy for England and focuses on the two key issues of carbon storage and biodiversity. I am sure that most Members of your Lordships’ House would agree, for example, with the phrase “the right tree in the right place”. To get towards that goal we need a strategy to head in that direction.

I also suggest to your Lordships that any land use strategy would have to consider whether there are some existing land uses in England that cannot be allowed to continue because of the environmental damage they are doing all round. I refer particularly to driven grouse shooting, which has real issues as regards carbon storage and flooding, and which is spatially very closely associated with illegal persecution of raptors, which we saw this morning with the police releasing horrific information about the killing of a goshawk.

I was pleased to add my name to Amendment 228, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. This refers to supporting landowners to make land available particularly to new growers, new farmers—new entrants into the industry. We are seeing some exciting developments. I know that in Suffolk there is discussion of the concept of jigsaw farming, whereby a farmer or landowner might be able to welcome on to their land a large number of different growers occupying small parcels and developing their businesses. We have seen how organisations such as the Biodynamic Land Trust and the Kindling Trust have had to work very hard to find land to make it available to people who want to enter the industry, and we have had reference to county farms.

Of course, we have a huge problem in England with the massive concentration of land ownership. Your Lordships have heard me refer before, and will again, to land reform. We need to come back to that, but for landowners who wish to make their land available to others, it is important that the Bill includes provision to make sure that that happens, and financial assistance where that would be useful.

Briefly, I support Amendments 127 and 134, which are backed by my noble friend. Again, they look at strategic priorities and multiannual plans, creating certainty for farmers.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook. I second his comments about the importance of food security and its absence from the Bill at present. It is also a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I commend Amendment 35 in her name for its focus on food security. One of the major roles of the Government must be to ensure that people can eat. I also commend Amendments 46 and 70, which are supported by my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.

I shall speak chiefly to Amendment 47, in my name, which my noble friend Lady Jones, the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, have kindly backed. I am also grateful that in our discussions last week, the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville and Lady Jones of Whitchurch, commenting on the linked Amendment 77, expressed support for the principle of this amendment and for the Bill to cover this explicitly.

To some degree, this amendment is a rebuttal of the statements made last week by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, suggesting that outdoor livestock production is not giving us enough food and, implicitly, that factory farming is essential. That suggests that production of meat is one of our problems, which is clearly not the case. In fact, we have meat production which is largely food waste. I am talking about factory farming, of course—feeding large quantities of perfectly edible grains, oils and proteins to produce far smaller quantities of meat. This is something we can no longer afford.

Land is a scarce resource, as the Government acknowledged last week. We cannot afford to waste it growing food that is immediately fed to animals, as we currently do with about 20% of farmland. There is an argument for small quantities of winter feed for predominately pastured animals, but that is very different from the vast chicken sheds, piggeries and factory dairies that we have seen expanding in the UK in recent years. The problem with them is not simply food waste, or the failure to produce healthy food. I often come under attack from people who wave a finger at me and say, “The Green Party wants people to eat less meat, isn’t that terrible?” Usually I point to those well-known radical environmentalists of the British Medical Association, which also says that we need far less meat in the British diet and meat of a far higher quality. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said last week, this is a very strong medical recommendation.

The noble Baroness also alluded to the crucial issue of antimicrobial resistance, something we hear concern about from all sides of politics, including the former Prime Minister David Cameron, who some years ago made it the subject of a major speech. In the past week, we have seen the chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline identify antimicrobial resistance as a predictable threat to global health on the same scale as Covid-19.

Sadly, Covid-19 has made all too clear the need to think about the welfare of workers, not only on factory farms but in the giant, fast-moving, mass-production abattoirs. There is also the health of our environment, including dead zones in our oceans and rivers from nitrogen pollution, and the air pollution problems on which my noble friend Lady Jones has tabled amendments.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, was right that we need protein. That is where the positive side of this amendment comes in, as it seeks to promote a shift to plant-based food production, particularly—one of the things that we have seen some progress on, but it must be much faster—the production of protein crops. It is interesting that this also means the potential for farmers to diversify into different crops, reducing risk. Of course, growing nitrogen-fixing crops often reduces or ends the need to rely on artificial fertilisers, with all the other benefits that have been rehearsed in this debate.

This amendment says, “We want to see the Agriculture Bill positively promote crops that are good for the environment, good for people’s health and good for farmers’ incomes and farm security.” I need to point to the possibilities of a pretty small-scale operation. A wonderful company called Hodmedod’s, which is very much focused on promoting different crops and restoring historical ones, recently grew lentils in the UK for the first time in quite some time. I also learned that it has been promoting carlin peas, which, as I learned in an internet discussion, are apparently a traditional cultural bar snack in Lancashire. Rather than peanuts, we could have local carlin, or parched, peas. This reminds us that we can have cultural restoration as well as the restoration of our health, well-being, soils and food. I commend Amendment 47 to the House.

I was also pleased to attach my name to Amendment 71, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. It would introduce a requirement to support healthy and nutritious food and, implicitly, avoid supporting unhealthy food. It is clear that our global food system, of which the UK is a closely enmeshed part, is entirely broken. Last year, before Covid, 690 million malnourished people were unable to get the basic calories they needed; a similar number are obese, unable to get the healthy food they need, and billions more are on that route. Yet we have just seen a truly tragic figure in the UK: the number of cases of children admitted to hospital suffering from malnutrition has doubled in the past six months to 2,500—and that was with only two-thirds of NHS trusts reporting. I hope that, in responding, the Government will say that it is their business to ensure that the UK meets the second sustainable development goal: zero hunger. Part of that is having a healthy diet, not simply an adequate number of calories. We not on track to meet that goal by 2030. In his response, I hope that the Minister will tell us how the Government hope to achieve that goal if they are not intending to use the Agriculture Bill to do so.

Amendment 75—tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and backed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville—seeks to improve public health by increasing the availability, affordability, diversity, quality and marketing of fruit, vegetables and pulses. I want to focus on marketing in particular. The World Cancer Research Fund has said that countries, including the UK, are failing to protect children from the effects of “harmful” junk food marketing. Children are having unhealthy food promoted to them but are not seeing the promotion of healthy food; the World Cancer Research Fund says that this is a human rights issue.

Finally, Amendment 75 refers to reducing the use of antibiotics and related veterinary products. I have been contacted by members of the public and industry asking what “related veterinary product” refers to; I would point to anthelmintics, in particular their impact on dung fauna and on insects on land and in watercourses. I do not consider this amendment as covering vaccines. I also note the similarity between this amendment and my Amendment 49, which would put a similar provision in Clause 1. If the EU target is for a 50% reduction in pesticide use in a decade and if the UK is to be world-leading in that regard, how will we get to that standard if not through the Agriculture Bill?

[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my own business interest in farming as already detailed in the register. In this group, I support Amendments 35, 36, 60, 69 and 71. All of them emphasise growing healthy and nutritious food. That also means growing and offering a rather better selection of food than we now do. Therefore, I am also in favour of Amendment 47 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, which advocates a shift in direction to achieve improved diets—still containing, but much less dominated by, animal products. I also support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, which urges more food production in urban areas.

Amendment 63 in my name would encourage urban and peri-urban growing enterprises to provide fresh local produce close to the market where it is required. I hope that my noble friend the Minister agrees that the Secretary of State might provide incentives accordingly. During the coronavirus pandemic, we have witnessed the importance of food security and local supply chains delivering food to where it is needed. Farming endeavours within conurbations can have an immediate and beneficial impact on supply chains, responding accurately to local demands. This contrasts with large supermarket chains sourcing goods from overseas and adding to the carbon footprint of such produce through transport costs.

Small-scale intensive food production uses little space yet reveals a high yield per acre as well-evidenced in the Netherlands. Those examples are particularly suited to towns and cities where ground is in short supply. Green-belt areas could also be freed up for such endeavours. They would also offer quality outdoor employment for people in urban environments.

Some of these projects might fulfil a social purpose too: for instance, city farms to educate children about animals and agriculture; and allotments, to which the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has already referred, which can teach people about food production at the same time as allowing and encouraging them to grow their own food. Not least, they also enable more green areas in cities for the benefit of those living there.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 9th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Krebs (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as recorded in the register. I shall speak to Amendment 57 in this group. What I will say follows on very much from the last few words of the previous speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. In the past 60 years, there has been a trade-off between producing more food from agriculture and protecting the environment. In the UK, we have increased productivity, but at a cost: destroyed habitats, lost species, polluted and over-abstracted water, and an increased carbon footprint. This has been highlighted in many reports, including the one published on Monday by the Food, Poverty, Health and Environment Select Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing.

It is also spelled out in the 2019 State of Nature report, which monitors trends in thousands of species in Britain. The report concludes, for instance, that the total number of breeding birds in Britain went down by 44 million between 1967 and 2009. It also concludes that the Government’s own assessment is that they will not meet most of the global 2020 targets that they are committed to through the convention on biodiversity. The report further concludes that agriculture is one of the most significant causes of these losses in biodiversity.

The Bill is our opportunity to change the way in which we farm, and Amendment 57 seeks to plug a gap in the Bill. As it stands, Clause 1(2) could be a get-out-of-jail clause. The Government could subsidise productivity gains at the expense of the public goods listed in Clause 1(1). Can the Minister reassure us that public goods will not be sacrificed on the altar of productivity?

As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has so clearly articulated, new technologies provide the possibility of enhancing productivity with less damage to the environment. This is particularly important when you consider that agricultural productivity is usually measured as a ratio of output over input, which in itself has some very odd features. It means, for example, that if farm A produced 9 tonnes of wheat with 1 tonne of agrichemical from a certain piece of land, while farm B produced 90 tonnes of wheat with 10 tonnes of agrichemical from a piece of land the same size, both would have identical productivity—but the two would have very different implications for both food supply and environmental pollution. Farm B produces 10 times as much food as A, but with the potential for 10 times as much impact on the environment.

More importantly for Amendment 57, productivity does not include any reference to protecting the environment. If the Government are serious about rethinking the relationship between agriculture and the environment, is it also time to rethink how we measure agricultural productivity? For instance, should it be measured as kilogrammes of potatoes per skylark, or tonnes of wheat per pyramidal orchid? I look forward to the Minister’s reply on the Government’s plans for how they will measure productivity in future and how they intend to balance the increasing productivity that is referred to with protecting the environment.

Lastly, I add a footnote on Amendments 12 and 13, on education. We know that in this country there is a plan afoot to plant many trees. The climate change committee’s target is to plant 1.5 billion trees as soon as possible if we are to meet our 2050 net-zero target. How many forestry graduates are produced each year in this country, and are there enough to provide the expertise to manage this huge change in tree planting?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. I very much endorse his committee’s report and urge noble Lords who have not read it yet to catch up with it. I also endorse his comments about Amendment 57, which is vital. We have seen so much focus on productivity measured purely as calories or tonnes per acre, which I will come back to in later groups.

I will speak primarily to Amendments 43 and 54, which are interlinked. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, already introduced them so I will not repeat that, but I thank him, the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for supporting them. I also thank the noble Baroness for setting out so clearly the huge importance of county farms in allowing opportunities for new farmers and young farmers to get into the industry. It is crucial that this network is protected and, indeed, significantly enhanced.

I also reflect what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said about local food and its importance in all communities, particularly those often labelled as “left behind”. Strong local food networks and strong local food-growing systems up and down the country mean that the economic benefits are distributed round the country. What we have in our economy in so many different ways is far too much concentration of economic benefits in London and the south-east. However, I have a word of warning about what the noble Lord said about cheap food. I always want to put scare quotes around “cheap food” in supermarkets. We always have to remember that cheap food is costing us the earth and our health.

I come to Amendments 43 and 54 and pay tribute to work of the Landworkers’ Alliance, Sustain and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which all had input into them. They highlight how local food systems deliver benefits on a scale from the local to the global, but have suffered from decades of underinvestment. Many of the people involved in them—the producers, processors, retailers and caterers—are small and have limited management and financial capabilities for collaboration and sector development, although I note that other elements of the Bill seek to encourage that. It is something we want to see the Government support across the board.

The benefits of local food strategies and infrastructure are that they reduce our reliance on imported food. That means reducing exposure to volatile global markets and to the uncertainties of a world that now looks increasingly uncertain indeed. Local food systems have the capacity to meet up to 80% of the UK’s food demands through UK-based production, over 50% of which can be produced within 100 miles of where it is consumed. Think what a different system it would be if the majority of the food on your plate was local, with all the economic benefits circulating in the local economy.

This would also have the global impact of reducing “ghost acres”—the land in other countries which should be available to feed their own populations their own local food, but which is currently used for growing export crops. It would allow producers to gain a higher share of the retail pound through short supply chains, make farming enterprises more profitable and make a valuable contribution to those local economies. It should never be forgotten that farmers now get a lot less than 10% of the benefit of every pound spent on food.

On the broader economic benefits, there is evidence from Nourish Scotland that for every pound invested in local food, £6 to £8 is returned to local society and over 50% is retained in the local economy, while with non-local enterprises, such as supermarkets, only 15% to 30% of the money is returned. Local food means that public health priorities are catered to and local communities have fresher, more nutritious, more affordable food. There is also increased interaction with local vendors and the satisfaction, perhaps, of volunteering at local farms and of community-supported agriculture. It also means that we can have more diverse, sustainable, mixed farms that produce multiple products. That would enable more on-farm recycling, lower inputs, reduction of food waste and other environmental benefits.

A five-year mapping study from 2012, Mapping Local Food Webs, estimated that 103,000 jobs across England could already be attributed to the local food economy, with 61,000 flowing from local food sales. Spending in local food outlets supports an average of one job for every £46,000 of annual turnover, while in the three major national chains it is one job per £138,000 to £144,000. We are talking about a system that works for people and for the environment, so I commend Amendments 43 and 54 to your Lordships’ House.

I will also refer to Amendment 61 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, to which I attached my name. It refers to growing under glass. I not sure that “glass” is quite the right word, but I am sure everyone knows what we are talking about. It talks about using renewable energy and there are real possibilities, such as using waste heat, reducing carbon emissions and using energy and resources well. This is an area in which the UK has very much been left behind compared with countries such as the Netherlands. I express my concern here. I have already tabled a Written Question to the Government about the low-carbon heat consultation, which currently excludes the potential of large-scale heat pumps, which could be fed into this area.

I will also briefly refer to Amendments 12 and 13. My noble friend Lady Jones attached her name to Amendment 12 and has already referred to both of them. It is vital to understand where our food comes from. I refer noble Lords to a fascinating study from the British Nutrition Foundation that found that one-third of primary school pupils thought that cheese came from plants. We have a long way to go to ensure that we have a full understanding of where our food comes from, the importance of food security and how our entire economy is a subset of the natural world.

[Baroness Rock (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my farming interests as set out in the register. I too add my support to Amendment 12 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle. I will speak to my Amendment 62, which would give the Secretary of State additional powers to enable the support of diversification activities on farms where the purpose of that activity is to support or maintain the agricultural, horticultural or forestry activity undertaken on that holding.

This is an agricultural Bill and, as such, it should be about ensuring the resilience of the agricultural sector and supporting public benefits from the farmed environment. There is a real danger that vital support could be lost to our farmers. Therefore, it is important to ensure that we support those individuals bearing the business risk and carrying out the day-to-day management tasks. The key for making the case for financial assistance for diversification projects under this Bill is to look at farm business income. Many farmers make a loss from core farming activities, so diversification becomes an important tool for sustaining a farmer’s income. Some 65% of farmers already have some diversified element on farm. In 2018-19 the total income from diversified activities was £740 million. Diversification is about creating income opportunities for a whole farming family and offers the chance for other family members to use other skills to support and maintain a family unit on farm or by staying in the local area. I think in particular about encouraging young people in rural areas, which can only benefit the local economy.

Given the current reliance on BPS, many farms will need to look for additional sources of income once direct payments are phased out. Enabling the Government to provide financial assistance for diversification activities could help to fill this gap and allow farming businesses to build their resilience and sustainability.

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[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for Amendments 19, 52 and 102 on the subject of rewilding and native species. I am very grateful for his elegant elucidation of what he means by rewilding and what it does and does not include.

I can confirm that the Government are committed to providing opportunities for reintroductions where the environmental and socioeconomic benefits are clear. Perhaps at this stage I should draw noble Lords’ attention to Clause 1(1)(4). In the words of my noble friend the Minister, there is a balance to be struck. Clause 1(1)(4) says:

“In framing any financial assistance scheme, the Secretary of State must have regard to the need to encourage the production of food by producers in England and its production by them in an environmentally sustainable way.”


We understand how the reintroduction of species can play an integral role in increasing biodiversity and restoring natural processes, as well as in other environmental outcomes such as climate change mitigation and adaption. The Government have already supported the reintroduction of native species in this country, such as the pine marten, the red kite and—as I am sure my noble friend Lord Randall and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, will be pleased to hear—the large blue butterfly. A number of noble Lords also mentioned other initiatives. We are keen to explore, through ELMS for example, where the reintroduction of species could be effective in delivering diversity and carbon benefits. My noble friend Lord Lucas mentioned the excellent work of Kew, with the provision of its seed bank.

However, my noble friends the Duke of Montrose and Lord Taylor of Holbeach and the noble Earl, Lord Devon, all injected a note of caution into the debate. These initiatives can often need more management than is anticipated. Beavers, mink and wild boar have all created some severe consequences for landscapes. Natural England is analysing the results of the Devon trial on the reintroduction of beavers. There are a number of other experiences of beavers across the UK and in other countries. Alongside the trials, there is a beaver management strategy framework that will help to inform decisions on the future of the Devon animals and the status of the beaver in England, including the Government’s approach for future reintroductions, management and licensing.

My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering raised issues to do with importing diseased trees. She will be reassured that the importation of invasive species is now prohibited. The Government already pay for the control and management of invasive species through an agri-enhancement scheme. We are considering how to manage invasive species as part of the whole ELM design. Clause 1 would allow this.

The purposes set out in Clause 1(1) are purposely drafted broadly and could cover the reintroduction of species, should it align with our strategic priorities, as set out in the Government’s multiannual financial assistance plan. We will publish the first report by the end of this year.

Several other rewilding projects are already under way in England. For example, as my noble friend Lord Lucas, the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and others mentioned, at Knepp, in West Sussex, agri-environment funding has helped create extensive grassland and scrub habitats, resulting in significant benefits for biodiversity. At this stage, I also endorse wholeheartedly the plug from the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, for the opportunities for wildlife watching in Wales.

With these reassurances, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle [V]]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for giving us the chance to have this important discussion and the Minister for her answer. In what is ranked as the 189th most nature-depleted country in the world, this is surely something we have to be talking about.

I am really pleased that so many Members of your Lordships’ House expressed excitement about the pine martens. I confess that I saw these from a bicycle, so I got quite close up in France. They are truly wonderful beasts, and I very much hope that someday soon—when we see rewilding of the Peak District near Sheffield, from where I am talking—I will be able to see them closer to home. I will also comment briefly on some of the discussion about the lynx—perhaps to throw a cat among the pigeons, or a lynx among the deer—and say that we may well have to look at that in future when restoring an ecological balance.

I pick up particularly what the Minister just described as severe consequences from some of the rewilding experiences. I have asked the Government a Written Question on beaver strategy, and unfortunately we still do not really have a timetable for that; it would be lovely to see one for them to be reintroduced around the country. Those severe consequences are that when you let nature run free, what is going to happen is not always predictable.

The philosophy of the 20th century has been one of tidiness—putting things in straight lines and everything being under human management. That was perhaps one of the great faults that the common agricultural policy encouraged. Can the Minister reassure the House that the current provisions in the Bill—or possibly a provision such as the one the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, proposed—ensure that we can allow the countryside and land under management to do its own thing, operate according to all the natural systems and re-establish those natural systems?

In more practical terms, we talk a lot about funding for tree planting, but sometimes it is simply necessary to ensure that land is protected and you get tree regeneration. That can be far more productive and effective and produces an appropriate range of species—the right tree in the right place. I am really seeking reassurance that the Bill will ensure that letting nature go will attract financial support when necessary.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

I can of course reassure the noble Baroness. Indeed, it is the first point of Chapter 1 that

“The Secretary of State may give financial assistance for or in connection with any one or more of the following purposes … managing land or water in a way that protects or improves the environment”.


The whole thrust of the Bill is to do just that.

I also take this opportunity to say to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that my noble friend the Minister is of course happy to meet him at any time.

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[The Earl of Shrewsbury [V]]

My Lords, the prevention of disease among livestock is critical to ensure a vibrant future for UK farming. The outbreak of disease can cripple farms, cause chaos for farming communities and, ultimately, cost the British economy. For example, the foot and mouth crisis in 2001 led to over 2,000 cases of the disease, and in each individual case it meant a farm having to cull all its livestock. I know at first hand about that; I was farming right in the centre of it and all my neighbours had their livestock taken out. It was horrible.

Globally, it is estimated that as much as 20% of animal production is lost from disease. Furthermore, preventive measures to tackle the disease in the UK remain too low, particularly in the case of endemic diseases. Just one example is severe foot rot, which is found in 90% of lame sheep, despite a preventive vaccine being available. Sick animals are of course less productive, have reduced welfare, and place a major burden on farmers.

The Bill represents a real opportunity to reduce this burden and build a resilient and sustainable UK farming system. It is welcome that the Bill makes provision for financial assistance to be provided to protect or improve the health or welfare of livestock, which is recognised as a key public good in Clause 1(1)(f). Yet one crucial nuance in the language of that provision must change. It states that financial assistance can be provided for the purposes of

“protecting or improving the health or welfare of livestock”.

The health and welfare of livestock is not an either/or matter; they are of equal importance and, from my perspective, this opinion is well understood and shared by many, but especially by livestock farmers and vets. Therefore, the Bill must read that financial assistance can be provided for the purposes of protecting or improving the health “and” welfare of livestock.

The current wording risks effacing the interwoven nature of animal health and animal welfare. Preventing diseases is conducive to good animal welfare. Indeed, the reality it is impossible for animals in poor health to have good welfare. Moreover, it is not only important that we get this right from a legislative standpoint but, given that this line appears in the opening section of the Bill and that it epitomises the objective of the legislation—to provide farm support for the public good—it is critical to establish the right tone in relation to how the UK approaches animal health and welfare issues. As such, that is why I tabled this amendment, which proposes to replace “or” with the little word “and”. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle [V]]

I thank the noble Earl for his introduction to this section on animal welfare, and I commend to your Lordships’ House Amendments 68, 125, 136 and 225 tabled by my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I also express my support for Amendment 44, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, which essentially expresses opposition to factory farming—a form of food waste that may come up in other sections of this debate.

However, my primary interest in this group relates to Amendment 77, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for supporting it. It is something of an orphaned amendment in that it relates to Amendment 47, which is in group 9. However, I can see why it was put here, because it refers to consulting with

“persons and organisations who represent animal welfare interests … relevant non-governmental organisations, and … other persons the Secretary of State considers appropriate”.

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[The Duke of Wellington [V]]

My Lords, I declare my agricultural interests as detailed in the register. Many amendments have been tabled to Clause 1 about the activities to which the Secretary of State can give financial assistance. I will speak to my Amendment 48, which seeks to increase certain payments that the Secretary of State is already, or will be, empowered to make. Farmers are currently paid for converting from traditional agriculture to an organic system. This is to compensate for the loss of production during the conversion period, which takes about three years. At the end of the conversion period, the farmer will then be certified and able to receive the premium price for the organic product.

However, the current level of conversion payments is clearly insufficient. According to the Government’s own figures, published on 28 May this year, the area of land in the United Kingdom farmed organically has fallen by 34% in the last 12 years. According to figures published recently by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, for the last 10 years the area of land farmed organically has increased by 200% in France, by 60% in Germany, by 76% in Italy and by 69% in Spain. In the UK in the same 10 years, it has fallen by 36%.

In this country, only 27% of land is farmed organically. This is in marked contrast to the average in the member states of the European Union of about 7%, and in Germany and Spain of over 9%. If one believes, as I do, that it is in the public interest for farmers to use fewer pesticides, fewer herbicides and fewer agrochemicals, it must surely be a public good to increase the area of land farmed organically.

The Minister may say that increased payments may be part of the new environmental land management schemes, but these do not begin until 2024. While the basic payments to farmers are being progressively reduced over the next few years, would it not be a public good to pay public money to farmers to convert to organic farming? Sales of organic food in the United Kingdom now represent only about 1.5% of all food sales. This compares with about 5% in France and Germany and just under 10% in Switzerland, so it may also be a public good to pay public money to encourage the increase of sales of organic food for the general health of the nation.

I therefore ask the Minister if he will accept this amendment to increase in the Bill from 2021 the conversion payments for organic farming, as I believe he already has the power to do. I wish the Government would commit themselves, among their other greening objectives, to vastly increasing the percentage of land farmed organically.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle [V]]

My Lords, it is my great pleasure to follow the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and to endorse entirely everything that he has just said. I was very pleased to sign his amendment. It very much complements one of the amendments in this group that I will come to later.

Across this group we have references to soil, agroecology and reductions in the use of pesticides and herbicides. We are talking about farming systems that work with nature— systems that do not use metaphorical coshes but instead see how we can use the existing systems, cultivate them and restore them. Of course, the foundation of that, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, outlined in his introductory remarks, is very much the soil. I guess I have to focus on this as the Member of your Lordships’ House who first used the term “tardigrades” in Hansard.

In the soil we have a range of animals—mites, springtails, nematodes and, of course, the earthworms that Charles Darwin was aware were so important. It is crucial that the Bill explicitly recognises the need to focus on the organisms in the soil, as well as the billion bacteria that you find in every teaspoon of healthy soil, and the fungi, which I will talk about in discussing another group. I therefore commend Amendment 29 from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas.

I have put my name to Amendment 224 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, about publishing a soil health index report within 12 months. It is really important that we have timetables built into the Bill, and into all the Bills that come before your Lordships’ House. We are very aware of many delays, whether it is the food strategy or the peatland strategy. The state of our soils and the state of nature cannot wait. We need to ensure that there are timetables for the Government to act upon and meet.

I also commend Amendment 217, about the long-term monitoring of soil, which fits into that same kind of approach. Furthermore, in this agroecological, joined-up approach, I commend Amendment 38 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and Amendment 39 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, on nature-friendly farming.

I was very pleased to put my name to Amendments 40 and 97 from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. As the noble Lord said, we have heard many words on agroecology; I recall Michael Gove, I think three Oxford Real Farming Conferences ago, saying that the Government were absolutely committed to agroecology. However, we do not really see this in the Bill in a coherent, central manner. Words and statements of intention from Ministers are fine, but we really want to see agroecology front and centre of the Bill.

I was also pleased to put my name to Amendment 42 from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on whole-farm agroecological systems, because this gets at the idea that we are not talking about a field or a single area and that we need to think about whole-farm systems. I think the Minister addressed this earlier: when he talked about education, he spoke about how woodland might well be part of a whole-farm approach or system. But this needs to be built into the actual farming elements of the Bill, to acknowledge that we need to see this agroecological approach taking in soil, water and all sorts of different plants, and to see arable, pasture and woodland as a complete system—what you might call an approach involving systems thinking or permaculture.

I turn now to a couple of amendments that appear in my own name, starting with Amendment 49, which very much builds on the earlier comments of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. This would put explicit aims in the Bill: reducing herbicide and pesticide use; ending the use of chemical fertilisers; and—moving to a concept that may not yet be familiar to many of your Lordships, but I am sure it soon will be—using the idea of nutrition per acre as a measure of the kind of farming that we want, and need, to see. We have seen already in the Bill an evolution towards an acknowledgement that farming is about food, which is a pretty obvious statement, but we need to produce good, healthy food as a public good and to contribute to public health. That is what this amendment addresses.

As the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, said, the EU has set figures and aims for the improvement of organic farming. Our record is, sadly, a very slow one, and indeed a story of going backwards. The EU has said that it wants to see 25% of its farmland become organic by 2030. We often hear from the Government in many contexts that they want to be world-leading. If they want the Agriculture Bill to be world-leading, they need to set a target for organics on the face of the Bill higher than that which the EU has set.

That is also the case in terms of fertiliser use: the EU has set a target of at least a 20% reduction in artificial fertiliser use by 2030. World-leading has to be better than that. That, of course, is an issue that feeds into so many other aspects we have been discussing in the Bill. My noble friend has sought to introduce references to air pollution; we are also concerned about water pollution from the use of nitrogen fertilisers, in particular. On pesticides, the EU has set a target of a 50% reduction by 2030. I refer the Government again to the issue of being world-leading.

We are often told that this is a framework Bill and all the detail is going to come later in regulations, but if we look at the Climate Change Act, that set out a very clear direction of travel that has since been enhanced. Anyone who read the Bill knew what the Government were trying to achieve. Sadly, a framework Act that has powers but not duties fails in that fundamental principle.

Finally on this amendment, I want to particularly mention nutrition per acre. A lot of this work comes from the Sustainable Food Trust, which is involved in one of Defra’s ELM trials, and is also based on the work of the Indian campaigner and environmentalist Vandana Shiva, who points out that biodiverse agroecological systems have much better outputs of micronutrients and phytonutrients. If we come at this from the other side, the British Nutrition Foundation had a very interesting round table in May 2019, which particularly focused on the fact that, of course, we know that we have a problem with obesity, with an excessive intake of calories, yet, like most of the global north, about three-quarters of people in Britain do not actually get sufficient nutrition in terms of vitamins, minerals, essential amino acids and fatty acids. If we are going to see a reduction in calorie consumption, we really have to be boosting the level of nutrition—the health of food. This is a relatively new area, but we are seeing and understanding that a carrot is not just a carrot—there can be massive difference between the nutritional content of a carrot grown under an agroecological system and a carrot grown in a heavily chemically fertilised, very worn-out soil.

I am aware that I have been speaking for some time, but I will refer briefly to Amendment 84 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on agroforestry. As he was saying, this has to be central to models of the future. If noble Lords have not been to the wonderful Wakelyns, the organic agroforestry research and development site in Suffolk, I urge them to visit and see what can be achieved. It is an inspiring case study and helps demonstrate the principle that agroforestry, broadly speaking, is one-third more productive than simple arable production.

Finally, I come to the amendment in this group that appears in my name. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Randall of Uxbridge and Lord Greaves, for signing it. Amendment 117 refers to meadows and semi-natural grasslands. I pay tribute to the campaigning group Plantlife, which did most of the work on this amendment. Noble Lords might recollect that last Saturday was National Meadows Day, which gave us a chance to reflect on the fact that we have lost 97% of our meadows since the 1930s. These beautiful, hugely valuable, biodiverse environments actually produce very healthy food for animals. We have been talking about the value of diversity in human diets; the same applies to animals. They are also crucial, of course, to our pollinators, which are central to so much of our food production. Having lost 97% of them, this amendment puts into the Bill the principle that we simply cannot afford to lose any more. This, as with many of our upland landscapes, is a hugely valuable, internationally precious resource that we have to protect. I ask noble Lords to consider ensuring that we include it in the Bill.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 40, to which I have put my name. It talks about financial assistance for establishing and maintaining agroforestry systems. I also support Amendment 84, which lays out what agroforestry actually means. I feel slightly guilty about this, because having pointed out on our first day in Committee the problems of this being a Christmas tree Bill that everybody wanted to hang a bauble on, here I am with a cherished bauble, because agroforestry systems have major benefits.

I should declare an interest as chairman of the Woodland Trust. Combining trees and farming is a very long-established system. Trees are a crop in themselves, but in combination with agriculture they also help nature, combat climate change and protect water, as well as being good for soil protection and animal welfare. For example, sheep with access to shelter belts of trees produce bigger lambs and suffer less ewe and lamb mortality. I offer my support to this amendment to probe and explore with the Minister how the Government will ensure that agroforestry might receive public funds under the terms of the Bill, since it undoubtedly delivers public goods.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

I shall have to move the amendment on the noble Earl’s behalf. I beg to move Amendment 1.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I have attached my name to Amendment 1 and shall speak also to a number of other amendments in the group. I thank the noble Earl for tabling Amendment 1: it was something I was thinking about. Indeed, I spoke to the Table Office, because much of the discussion around the Bill has focused on the fact that it provides powers but not duties. I suggested to the Table Office that we could go through the whole Bill and change every “may” to “must”, and those in the Table Office persuaded me that that might not be the best way forward. I thank them for their patience and all their expert assistance. I think the noble Earl has managed to focus on the key part of the Bill, where “may” should be changed to “must”. I know he tabled it as a probing amendment, but we should think about this as a serious way forward: a duty to look after the key principles of carbon storage, ecosystems, the state of our natural world and healthy food. These should be a duty of the Minister.

Amendments 8, 22, 25, 31 and 50, in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, are all about air pollution, which is a huge gaping hole in the Bill. It looks at water, at soil and at our ecosystems on the ground, but does not talk about the air; yet it is all part of an interrelated system and we know that air pollution and farming issues are closely interrelated.

I have also attached my name to Amendment 67 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, which says:

“Financial assistance may only be given for Environmental Land Management Schemes Tier 2 and Tier 3 if those individual schemes are in line with the local Nature Recovery Strategy”.


This addresses a crucial point: we need joined-up, systematic thinking about the nature of our countryside. At the moment, we have a number of silos. We have the Environment Bill, the Agriculture Bill and the now delayed food strategy, and we need to make sure that these are all joined up and working together, not at cross-purposes to each other. We need a whole-landscape approach, something the Wildlife Trust has been doing a lot of excellent work on, although we have to notice that what we see in the Environment Bill will lay new duties on councils, which, as we discussed in Oral Questions, already have enormous burdens on them.

Finally, Amendment 234 in my name, would add a clause headed “Agricultural extension”. It has notable similarities with an amendment in another group—Amendment 122, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. Both of us are getting at the point that farmers need reliable, independent, secure, certain expert advice. In preparing for today I looked at the debates in your Lordships’ House back in 1996 and 1997 when the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service was privatised. There were some very telling words from the late Lord Mackie of Benshie, who talked about how, since the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service had started charging for its services, less use was being made of them. Some people —perhaps those who needed them most—could not afford them.

The state of our countryside and our agricultural land is a matter of national interest. It is something that we cannot leave to market forces. We have seen, in terms of agricultural extension and advice, a huge reduction, huge privatisation and a move towards many farmers being forced to take advice from the suppliers of agricultural chemicals and agricultural seeds, and even from their buyers, the supermarkets. Farmers need independent, expert advice. We need people to be able to develop careers in providing that advice. If we have an expert on growing potatoes in the south-west who spends decades focusing just on that, that is very hard to do in the private sector. If potatoes have a few bad years, no one can afford to pay that person and they do not have the chance to develop their skills in the way that they would in an advisory service.

We have to look at the whole system here. Part of a proper agricultural system has to be a government-run advice service. That is something that has existed historically for a very long time. It can a be traced back three millennia: in ancient China we know that there was a government Minister advising farmers on how to improve agricultural systems. This is a matter of national interest; it needs national involvement and a proper advice service.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 67 and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for her support for it. My main interest here is in connection with the broader environmental policies of the Government as they bring these forward in legislation. As I said at Second Reading, I very much welcome the ELMS initiative; it is a major step forward in the use of state aid for the farming industry and how it is to be targeted.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 10th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, we begin this debate at a time when the subject of the Bill is of acute urgency. That is not just for the obvious reason—the looming threat of a crash-out Brexit and the need for farmers to have certainty about what is happening in a few months’ time—but because it is being debated with our countryside and food system in a state of emergency, The nature crisis, the collapse of biodiversity and bioabundance, that has left the UK one of the most nature-deprived nations on earth; the obesity and health crisis associated with nutrient-poor diets; and the dominance of the supermarkets in what we eat: these are the issues that the Bill could and should be tackling.

Instead what we have is a shell, a statement of a few principles that are not generally bad in themselves and are sometimes even admirable, and certainly somewhat improved since earlier iterations of this legislation, but there are few commitments to action. This is a grade D effort, not even a pass mark, when what we need is a sterling, standout, brilliant Bill, something—I am sure the Government will agree with me on this—that is world-leading.

The limitations of our arrangements in your Lordships’ House, imposed not only by Covid but by the usual channels, have ensured that many Peers with valuable contributions to make—my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb among them—have been excluded from this debate. I know they are pushing for a second day of this debate and I hope that is secured. Given the extreme time restrictions on today’s speech, I am going for a checklist of issues that my noble friend will be covering: safeguards on import standards, ensuring that agriculture reaches net-zero carbon as soon as possible, and animal welfare standards.

My focus will be on the farming system and the food system. When farmers hear criticism of the system they often take it as criticism of themselves, but we know that they have been betrayed by decades of failed government policies. They need a Bill that gives them a real choice to build back better. The Government say they support agroecology. Words are good but a direction to the Secretary of State to support whole-farm agroecological systems is far more important.

The Bill also lacks a commitment to organic agriculture. The EU’s 2030 biodiversity strategy plans for 25% of agricultural land there to be organic. The EU is also looking at a 50% reduction in the use of pesticides and cuts to mineral fertiliser use. If the Government want to be world-leading, they have to do better than that. Crucially, we need to ensure that the payments for productivity in Clause 2 do not undermine progress on biodiversity, climate and animal welfare.

Some are arguing that we should downplay nature and sustainability and dial up food production, but that is a false dichotomy that risks doubling down on a food system that is contributing to a perfect storm of a spillover of diseases from wildlife to people, and, like the proponents of genetically modified organisms and crops, it chases after a failed industrialised monoculture. Just as there is a growing consensus on the need to measure economic progress with indicators far more useful than GDP, we must adopt new indicators for agriculture. We need to think about people nourished per hectare, not tonnes of biomass.

Protection for the basic infrastructure of farming—farmers—is also missing. They need financial security for long-term planning. The idea of multiannual financial assistance in the Bill is good but guarantees are needed.

Let us see a commitment to many thousands of new entrants. We need to see the county farms supported. We need to see the green belt used to the best advantage and, as other noble Lords have said, a comprehensive land-use strategy. Then there is democracy. Let us give Northern Ireland control, and let us bring in people’s assemblies to oversee agricultural policy.

We have learned that our holidays this year will be significantly curtailed. Good. Now we need the department and the Government to take the time to listen to the expertise of this House.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I remind the noble Baroness of the speaking limit.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle [V]]

We need to stand up for what the people and the environment desperately need: a good, world-leading agriculture Act.

Food Supply and Security

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for securing this debate and for her comprehensive and deeply sobering introduction. I associate the Green group with all the concerns that she expressed. I do not know whether in recording this debate, Hansard plans to put the phrase “cheap food” in scare quotes, but it certainly should. So-called cheap food is costing us the earth and our health.

I know that when farmers hear criticism of the food system, they often feel that it is directed at them, but many noble Lords have rightly focused on the over- weening, enormous place of supermarkets in our food distribution system. The National Farmers’ Union has highlighted how farmers get just 6% in the food chain. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, focused on how supermarkets advertise, promote and push highly processed food that is disastrous for our health. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, rightly said that government procurement should look to support local food-growing and distribution systems rather than supermarkets. Here in Sheffield, I have been lucky enough to get great Yorkshire cheese from local suppliers, and just this morning I got a fruit and veg box from a local cafe. These should be supplying schools, hospitals and prisons.

We also need to think about how food is grown. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, referred to European workers doing the heavy lifting. In a report in the Times, an asparagus grower was quoted as saying, “British workers just won’t do 12 hours a day of back-breaking work”. But I think that no one should be asked to do that. That means that we need a different kind of food system: small, market garden, biodiverse crops, which pretty well anyone could work on. That also means that we need reform of our land ownership. We need tens, even hundreds, of thousands of small businesses around our towns and cities, growing healthy food and supporting horticulture, building a different kind of food system that works for people and planet.

Agriculture: Genome-edited Crops

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I absolutely agree with what the noble Baroness has said. That is precisely what we need to do when considering any changes. The most important thing is consumer confidence. We are absolutely clear that there is merit in certain genome-editing activity. The noble Baroness mentioned the Rothamsted Research institute. There is also the Earlham Institute, the James Hutton Institute, the Sainsbury Laboratory and the John Innes Centre. All of our great laboratories are very positive about this research, and we do think that we should reconsider the current regulations.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I commend the Minister on the Government’s focus on agroecology as the way forward for agriculture and on the inclusion of soil health in the Agriculture Bill. Does the Minister acknowledge that the 21st-century approach of working with nature, with a whole-farm approach, is the direct opposite of the simplistic 20th-century GM editing approach? Should not our research efforts be focused on agroecology and working with nature?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

Obviously, much of what we want to do is to work with the rhythm of nature. The point I was seeking to make earlier about gene editing is that, in particular where it merely escalates a natural process, there is an advantage to it. In terms of enhancement of the environment, we want to get disease-resistant crops and to improve animal welfare. A lot of the research is in order to assist things that the noble Baroness would support.

Tree Pests and Diseases

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, for his lyrical introduction to this debate and for the initiative shown by him and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, in securing it.

I will begin with a sentence from the Royal Horti- cultural Society website:

“Importing plants poses potential risks of introducing new pests and diseases.”


Much of the debate has focused on the actions of individuals. The noble and learned Lord began by referring to his pine cone. Perhaps he missed the Government’s Don’t Risk It! campaign, which involved posters at ports and airports. But as the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, has just outlined, the real risk is actually from commercial imports. Individual actions form a tiny part of the problem and there is a risk that if we focus on those actions we will engage in displacement activity rather than focusing on the real problem.

Forestry Commission figures show that the plant trade has doubled over the last 10 years. In the past decade, the number of diseases brought in is the same as the number brought in over the previous 50 years, so it is rising five times as quickly. The UK Plant Health Risk Register lists five to 10 new pests and diseases every month. Any scientist will tell you that correlation is not causation, but the links are clear and well evidenced. This is globalisation in action: a change in our systems embarked upon with scant consideration for the impacts. A few people have made very large profits while the rest of us have paid.

We are inevitably going to see an increase in plant and tree pests and diseases because we are in a climate emergency. The changing weather conditions will enable pests and diseases to flourish which could not get a hold before. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said, birds will fly around and that is the sort of thing we cannot do anything about except to be vigilant, but we can act by changing the system of how we secure our plant supplies. I say plants rather than simply trees because many noble Lords have talked about Xylella, which poses a risk across a wide variety of plants. We are also seeing huge imports of indoor plants and even cut flowers which present a risk to our native ecosystems. In 2017, those imports were worth £975 million a year. I have a direct question for the Minister: we will soon see the Government’s food strategy, so surely it is time for a horticulture strategy. We have been talking about tree nurseries, but the issue goes more broadly in terms of fruit and vegetable production. Should that not be tied in with the food strategy as well?

The fact is that a lot of the imports of trees and other plants are from the Netherlands. It set up a co-ordinated government strategy to develop its horticulture industry. I too have met some horticultural food producers in the UK who also focused on the fact that they are finding it very difficult to get finance from our banks, while banks on the continent are prepared to fund horticultural industries, which is something else to look at in the policy area.

If I were to offer the Minister some thoughts about what a horticultural strategy might look like, I would point him to the Government’s own words about their agriculture strategy and agroecology. That means working with nature and not relying on giant industrial monocultures. If we are thinking about a British tree nursery industry, what we will need is diverse small-scale holdings made up of independent businesses and co-operatives that are scattered around the country, which will help produce a more diverse stock. When I tweeted about this debate before it began, the Bristol Tree Forum came back to me asking me to stress the importance for their health of the genetic diversity of the stocks that we plant, and I am very pleased to do that. It is what we need to ensure healthy woodlands and trees.

How do we create those small, independent businesses? There is perhaps a model in the One Wales: One Planet development strategy, which allows small businesses access to land. I suggest to noble Lords that we also need to look at land reform in England to enable people to access land in order to set up small, independent tree nurseries. Another way in which the Government might act was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes: government procurement. We have seen progress on this already, but not far from where I am standing now, the Florida fig trees in Portcullis House are an example of how government procurement traditionally has not done what it should have done to support local industry.

A number of noble Lords have referred to the need to protect woodlands from pests which are already here. Again, we should think about the agroecological approach. Reference has been made to grey squirrels. We know that supporting the spread of pine martens will help red squirrels compete against grey squirrels. Also—dare I say?—if we are thinking about deer, perhaps we should also be thinking about reintroducing the lynx as a natural control mechanism. I am talking, of course, about the rewilding of the UK. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said, “Copy nature and you will succeed”, and that is essentially the agroecological approach.

The noble Earl, Lord Devon, referred to the heavily overstretched Forestry Commission staff and the amount of work they have to do. At the end of last year, Friends of the Earth produced a report showing that overall, the UK Government were spending less than £1 per person per year on trees, including the work of the Forestry Commission. We hear much talk of the end of austerity, so I ask the Minister whether we can expect to see a significant boost to the budget of the Forestry Commission to deal with all the threats that have been so clearly outlined today.

The Library briefing, which other noble Lords have cited, refers to the need for common frameworks for working with the devolved Administrations. We also need to see close co-operation with our European neighbours on tackling many of these pests and diseases: a co-operative approach to ensure that they are held back. I hope very much that we will see the kind of diplomatic environment which allows that to continue.

Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard)
Wednesday 29th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the gestation period of a cow is about 280 days. I make that reference not to remind your Lordships that my first degree was in agricultural science but to reflect on the fact that most of the calves that will be born under the Bill that we are about to pass have already been conceived. As the noble Earl, Lord Devon, said, this is policy-making on the hoof. For a farmer who is deciding whether to plant a tree in a shelterbelt or to plant a new hedge, the timeframe for seeing the returns on that are much greater, well beyond even the planned seven-year phase-out of the basic payment system that we expect to see in the forthcoming Agriculture Bill.

The decision to disapply CAP in the withdrawal agreement was probably unavoidable but it has left our farmers in a state of great uncertainty, as we have heard from many noble Lords who are themselves farmers. Yes, they had promises that it would happen, but those are only words. We have heard many words, some of them referring to your Lordships’ House, but I doubt that anyone has yet consulted their removers on the cost of moving their residence up to York.

If the Government had made progress on the Agriculture Bill—stranded since November 2018—in the previous Parliament, we would not need this one. I remind your Lordships’ House that that is a reflection of the huge problems that we have in the quality of governance, independent of its ideological content, and the way in which our unreformed political system is simply not working.

I make another systemic point, this time about the Rural Payments Agency. A number of noble Lords have referred to the delays in farmers receiving payments. The RPA saw its budget cut from £237 million in 2010 to £95 million in 2018. This is austerity. We hear talk about austerity in lots of other contexts, but let us recognise that this was a decision made across government that has had real consequences right across society.

The Bill is narrow in scope and duration but I want to take this opportunity to focus on the level of uncertainty that our farmers and growers are facing, relating to both policy and climate—that is, the uncertainty of what the climate emergency will bring them. We have of course heard references to the weather this year. I thank the Minister for his response to my Written Question HL541 about independent advice to farmers. In response he referred to

“considering both private and public sector options.”

I am disappointed not to see in that Answer any reference to farmer-led advice and research.

Last year I was at the Oxford Real Farming Conference. I heard a German minimum-till organic vegetable grower talking about how government-funded academics had come to his farm, conducted research to answer the questions that he wanted answered and then provided him with advice based on that research. The farmers and growers in the room gasped. They were gasps of astonishment that government-funded research could work in that way, and perhaps also gasps of envy because they would like to see something similar. We have seen so much advice farmers have had to rely on coming from commercial interests based on commercial research by seed companies and agrochemical companies. Facing this state of uncertainty, how will we ensure that farmers get answers to the questions they need answered in the next seven years and beyond?

I am very aware of the narrow scope of the Bill. We are all of course looking forward to the Agriculture Bill. I will make three brief points with regard to what we have seen of that thus far. I do not believe that we have seen anything like an understanding from the Government of the need for the utter transformation of our agriculture and land use that the climate emergency and our nature crisis demand. We will also get to a social crisis. UKSSD looked at Britain’s ability to meet the sustainable development goals and we are not on track to meet any of them. Farming and land use are an important part of how we reach those goals.

We have heard some reference to the food strategy. That needs to be integrated with the land use strategy. We also need to be thinking about incomes policy, benefits and welfare, with people being able to pay for the food they need so that farmers and growers get a decent return. That is part of agriculture policy. It is all interrelated. Control of the supermarkets is crucial. We need to think about food security and feeding ourselves; that has to be the most basic requirement of government. We also need to think about food quality. I heard an academic being asked what kind of food and farming we need and they said, “I can answer that in one word: vegetables.” Only 18% of children in the UK eat their supposed five a day. That five-a-day recommendation was decided by sociologists, not nutritionists. Nutritionists will tell you that it is 10 a day. That means we need to grow at least eight times as much fruit and vegetables in the UK as we do now to head towards healthy food self-sufficiency.

This may be my most unpopular point—noble Lords might be surprised to hear that. I am sure most noble Lords would agree that we need to tackle food waste. When thinking about our future agricultural policy, I put it to your Lordships that feeding perfectly good food to animals in factory farming is food waste and has to stop.

In concluding, I come back to the point on which I started: the quality of governance. This Bill is fundamental for security and we are racing it through just days before the deadline. That is no way to run a Government. A Member of your Lordships’ House commented that they thought I would come back to democracy in every speech I made—that is probably just about true. I refer your Lordships to an excellent little book called Nation of Devils by Stein Ringen that shows that countries with democratic proportional electoral systems have a better quality of governance, make better decisions and do not end up in an utterly last-minute, on-the-hoof race, as we have today.