Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Carrington

Report stage
Wednesday 15th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register.

I also want to speak about this interesting clause, which I have been scratching my head about for some time. The need for some top-down planning was clearly identified by Henry Dimbleby in the recent national food strategy report. However, top-down planning on its own and on the scale envisaged is not practical, as there is always a need for local factors to be considered at the same time. While there is some merit in the concept of focusing public funding on the right thing in the right place, it is neither realistic nor desirable to micromanage what happens right down to parish level. As food producers and environmental guardians, farmers and land managers should be at the core of any approach to developing a framework. A framework for land use should be about joining up policy on the ground, not dictating what is done on the land in a very prescriptive way. Any land-use framework should be positive and enabling—allowing land managers to deliver more from their land, whether for the environment, food or other economic activity—rather than negative and restrictive.

The most interesting objective of the clause recognises the need to consider agriculture and food production. Farmers and landowners have often asked for a more strategic approach to land use, particularly now that land may be taken out of production for carbon-offsetting purposes, housing or whatever, so a clause along these lines helps to deal with the issue. However, this clause has much wider ambitions that could greatly restrict the progression of farming and the diversification of farm businesses, let alone other rural businesses. Zoning would almost certainly make it harder or more expensive to get planning permission for a new or different enterprise.

A land-use framework can never succeed in circumstances where there are going to be changes in technology, climate conditions, consumer demand and business viability, to name just a few considerations, all of which could happen in very short order. Furthermore, there are also likely to be major, currently unforeseen implications for land values and tax considerations that need much more research. I therefore cannot support the amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, I have just tossed out more or less everything that I was going to say. I feel the need to respond to what he has just said, which I think is founded on the idea that each patch of land, each farm, is a discrete entity that has no real relationship to the entities around it. As is most obvious when we think about the climate emergency, the fact is that the carbon emitted from or stored on that land has global implications. That is very obvious in relation to flooding. I will not open up that debate, but certain land uses in this country are associated with large amounts of water runoff, and that has literally life-or-death implications for the communities downstream.

The noble Lord also referred to food production. We have to think about the food security of the UK in a world in which food security will become an increasing issue in the coming decades.

We have to think about systems holistically, and indeed we have signed up to do just that. Like all the nations in the world, we are a signatory to the sustainable development goals—a mix of economic, social and environmental goals—although we are not currently on track to deliver any single one of them. The question is: the Government have signed up to these goals, but how will they deliver them? Making sure that land is used well—not in a way that harms other people—surely has to be a foundational measure.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Carrington

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 15th September 2020 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, during the dinner break, I went for a brief walk and reflected then on what feels like ancient history: my honours thesis in 1983, which was on abomasal bloat in goat kids. Your Lordships can be reassured that I am aware it is dinner time, so I will not venture further into that subject. However, one thing that emerged during that year, as I was completing that honours thesis, was that the work had received some modest support from a milk manufacturer. It had donated the supplies for the goat kids, and in return got an awful lot of free student labour and the imprimatur of a university using its product. Soon, however, we found that there was a conflict between the commercial interest of the manufacturer and that of the science. It was private profit versus public good.

My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and I have been reflecting on that again and again today. Relying on the market rather than public service’s guidance and rules has led us to the society and countryside we have today. The market will, and by law our commercial companies have to, maximise private profit. All too often, that is at the cost of public good.

A seed company, fertiliser or pesticide manufacturer, or tractor company will want to sell more of their products, but moving in the direction we are talking about—agroecology, agroforestry, looking after the land—often means reducing, and using fewer, inputs: for example, using a local tree nursery for hedges and fruits rather than a multinational seed company. Yet, so much of the advice and information that farmers have been forced to rely on over recent decades has come from those commercial sources, which do not want to head in the direction provided by this Bill. So, we have to provide an alternative source of advice.

If we look at the history of this—to where we went backwards and went wrong—we go back to 1996 and the debate in your Lordships’ House on the privatisation of ADAS. Lord Mackie of Benshie said then that charging for its services had led to less advice being requested, a shift towards commercial suppliers’ advice and a concern about how public opinion of farmers had declined. In Committee on this Bill, I put forward a modest little amendment, 234, suggesting that a service be established by means of which farmers could associate, lead research and work with the experts we have now.

I ask the Minister at some point to look back to that discussion. One interesting, original contribution came from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who developed this proposal into something like a NICE for farming. Where otherwise is the advice and support in this clause to come from? It is clear that we need a duty to provide that advice, as so many other noble Lords have said in this debate. Farmers cannot be left on their own in this fast-changing, uncertain situation. This is not just about the Agriculture Bill; so many other aspects of the world are changing—the climate emergency, for example, and different markets and economic situations. We need to develop the expertise; we need the Government to do this. I would argue that this amendment is a crucial step in that direction, and I commend it to your Lordships’ House.

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. I supported the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, on the same amendment in Committee and I continue to support him. I will not repeat my previous remarks but emphasise that, without access to funding for advice, the take-up of the proposed environmental land management schemes will be more limited. I certainly agree with the interesting hypothecation idea of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood.

Farmers will be considering new ventures of which they may have no experience, so they need funding for advice. The average farmer is not a rich man; his success is likely to have come from concentrating on what he knows best. Our capricious climate has clearly demonstrated that sticking to what you do best is a sensible policy in farming. The farmer is therefore unlikely to rush into a new scheme without considerable thought and encouragement. As mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, he is also aware that under previous schemes, including BPS, the sanction regime has been tough. So, once again, he is unlikely to move swiftly into ELMS without a great deal of thought and advice.

I raised in Committee the issue of the digital divide, which was identified by the University of Sheffield and the Institute for Sustainable Food. For many in rural areas, access to good broadband may be limited. This, together with lack of time and, perhaps, age and social isolation, has made it difficult to follow developments on the ELM schemes. All this means that it is so important to provide financial advice to farmers for training and guidance so that they can be encouraged into ELMS on the basis of knowledge and confidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. I support both amendments. In the case of Amendment 43, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, I believe that, with our existing knowledge of the precarious existence of farmers—particularly in upland areas—and their importance to the physical and social landscape of their localities, it is important to be able to support them through non-production-related schemes, as many of the existing and proposed schemes may not work for them. I hate to bang on about this, but it is particularly relevant in the light of the proposed cuts to BPS—even if it is only 5% in the first year, although some of us argue about how important 5% is. There is a lack of detail about what will follow in subsequent years, and also a lack of detail on ELMS.

I see no reason why Amendment 44, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, cannot be adopted, as it should cost the Government nothing since contributions to the RDP should already have been budgeted and, as I understand it, are expected to be rolled into the new proposed UK Shared Prosperity Fund. It is therefore just a timing issue, and correctly gives the necessary reassurances to the current RDPs.

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

My Lords, I am in favour of both these amendments. I was just reflecting on a visit I made to a small town in south Shropshire called Clun, which was then home to what was said to be the food bank in the smallest community anywhere in the UK. I am glad that both noble Lords introducing these amendments have focused not just on the individual situations, as pressing as they often are, but on the need for communities to be assured that money is coming in. On that basis, we want a Britain where there is no need for any food banks; we should not rest until the last food bank closes due to lack of demand. In the meantime, we have to find other ways to make sure that money is going into communities that sometimes are, and have for some time been, really struggling.