Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Greaves

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 17th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. I hope it will go to a vote and that we will pass it, because it is so important and requires further discussion, and it would be very helpful for the House of Commons to have to discuss it.

This amendment is like the proverbial good pudding—it is full of good things or plums, or whatever you want to say. In particular, I pick out the question of food waste, which is such an important issue—everybody says it is important but nobody does a huge amount about it. How important it is to support local and regional food identities in the production of quality and diverse food. On restricting the marketing, promotion and advertising of less healthy food, I agree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has said.

There has been huge political, economic and commercial pressure in this country in recent years for cheap food. A lot of food in this country is in fact, by historical standards, incredibly cheap—but being cheap does not necessarily mean that it is good food. It can be: in Trawden, an old weaving village just up the valley from where we live, there was no shop left, but a group of volunteers got together to set up a community shop that provides an astonishing range of really good, diverse, nutritious food which is incredibly cheap. Of course, most of the staff there are volunteers; you can do it on that basis, but it is not a basis for everywhere.

On the other hand, in June, when I came down before the recess, the facilities here were not all that great, due to the position that we are in. So I called at a convenience store on the way in and bought a couple of what, from the pictures on the packet, looked like rather nice ready meals. I could not believe how ridiculously cheap they were—less than a couple of bags of crisps, really. I put them in the microwave in the pantry on our corridor and thought I would have my tea. I have not eaten such nasty food for a long time. It was awful. You can tell that I do not do much shopping, given that I was buying these things. Nevertheless, it was an eye-opener as to how nasty cheap food can be.

The problem is that people who are living on the absolute minimum income—the sort of people whom the Minister was talking about earlier, who rely on the DWP—have to buy the cheapest food that they can get, because of their circumstances. So, for the people who buy a lot of the cheapest food because they cannot afford more, not only is the food cheap, it is not good. This is so important.

This amendment, in a way, underlines the whole Bill. We have talked about food production; the environment in which it is produced; the effect of food production on the environment; the quality of food; the standards that will be applied to food that is imported and to the production of that food—and all the rest of it. But where is the food strategy itself? What is the Government’s view on the food strategy? The Minister spoke of “safe, healthy, affordable food” and was quoted again by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. But we do not know what the present Government’s overall strategy will be when it comes to the trade-offs between incomes for farmers, quality of food, price of food and where it all rests with international trade. We are still waiting for the Government to tell us.

We know what the different systems can be. First, if farmers are to produce food in this country, they must have sufficient income—that is pretty obvious—but the question is how that income will be put together. We know that the existing CAP system, which is mainly, though not entirely, based on the area of land in a farm, will be replaced by payments for public goods. In Committee, I tried to tease out from the Government a definition of “public goods” but such a definition was not forthcoming. It means different things to different people, according to what they think is important. I think that access is an important public good; other people do not necessarily disagree but put more priority on other things—even I might put more priority on other things. What is a public good? Is the production of good, healthy, affordable food a public good or is it, as the Minister said several times previously in his replies on this Bill, a private good, because it is something that can be left to the market and the price that farmers and producers get for that food is a private, not public, good? There is a muddle about this.

You can put tariffs up, which is basically what the Common Market did originally. It protected the European farmers behind tariffs in order to provide food security in Europe. That then turned into production subsidies and a level of intervention in the market that resulted in the famous beefs mountains—which people out there still think are part of the CAP, although they disappeared long ago. Then it was all decoupled from production and the farm payments were based on land; that is the system that we have more or less got to now, with some environmental bells and whistles added. Now it is going to be decoupled from land and based on public goods. That is all very well, but none of that says what our trade relationships with other countries will be—the countries that we import food from and export food to—or what trade arrangements we will have. Deal or no deal, we will have arrangements with the European Union and with countries in the rest of the world. The nature of those arrangements and how they will work will have as much effect on the future of farming and of food—the price and what we get—in this country as everything in this Bill. They must be looked at together.

I would say that we need to concentrate on fair trade, health and well-being and environmental sustainability, putting the whole trade thing in the context of the environment. One of the best books I have read in the last year or two was Doughnut Economics, by Kate Raworth, an economist. She puts economics into the framework of society and the environment, rather than at the top. I recommend it to all noble Lords—and to the Minister. I hope he can tell us what our strategy for food will be in the future, in relation not just to all the things in this Bill but to our trading relationships with the rest of the world.

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

My Lords, I rise to offer the Green Party’s wholehearted support for this amendment. I reflect, as I did yesterday with the immigration Bill, that the current system of a maximum of four signatures does not allow the full breadth of cross-party support for an amendment to be shown on the Marshalled List. This is something that I may be raising with the House authorities.

I begin by returning to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, in introducing this amendment: neither human health nor the environment can wait any longer. That made me think of Oral Questions yesterday when the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, in a supplementary question, asked the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, where our peat strategy was. This is an extremely urgent climate matter. I heard the chief scientist from Defra reflecting this morning on how crucial this was, how the UN will soon be including peat emissions in its global calculations and how we need to act. Yet we are still waiting. We have no legislative framework and we do not know when we will get this delayed strategy. When we are talking about the food, health and diet of the nation and the well-being of our agricultural land, we cannot afford to leave this hanging.

It is often said that we are talking about creating, for the first time, a food strategy for England. Wales and Scotland have been well ahead of us in this area for many years—particularly Scotland. But we do have a food strategy. Our current strategy, although it is not written down, is to let supermarkets and multinational manufacturing companies decide what we eat. As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, set out in her extremely informed speech—she is of course your Lordships’ House’s expert in these areas—how that has given us a truly dreadful diet and a truly dreadful environment. We have to give people the chance to eat well and healthily, which simply is not available to them at the moment through our current food strategy.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Greaves

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

[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.