Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

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

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a landowner, arable farmer and NFU member. I am speaking to and, subject to the Minister’s response, planning to move Amendment 12, as well as speaking to Amendment 17. These amendments support domestic agriculture to ensure that food security and the stability of food supply are included in the purposes to which financial assistance can be directed under Clause 1.

According to the NFU, 21 August was the notional day on the calendar that would see the UK run out of food if it relied solely on UK produce. It states:

“The nation is only 18% self-sufficient in fruit, 55% in fresh vegetables and 71% in potatoes. For both veg and potatoes, this has fallen by 16% in the past 20 years.”


As I understand the figures, 30% of our food comes from the EU. Supermarkets are fine at the moment, but just imagine a scenario if the UK fails to get a trade deal with the EU so that nothing is agreed on fishing rights, and then French fishermen decide to blockade Calais. That could leave the UK really struggling in obtaining particular food items.

The coronavirus crisis has shown how important it is to have a domestic supply of food. The view of farmers as food producers has never resonated more with the public than at this time, with the need to keep our shelves stocked the highest of priorities. I welcome the fact that the Government recognised that food production role by granting farmers key worker status during the countrywide lockdown. However, I believe that, unless the Government change their post-Brexit immigration policy, there may not be enough workers to gather UK fruit and vegetables in particular, already in short supply, as mentioned.

Given the increased significance of food security in the UK, Amendment 12 in particular would enable the Government to give financial assistance for the explicit purpose of supporting the domestic production of food. After the original Bill barely mentioned food, there is a considerable improvement in this new one. In Clause 1 at present, in developing new forms of financial assistance, the Bill states that the Government

“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.”

However, in my view that wording needs strengthening, as the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, has said, hence particularly my Amendment 12.

In reply to Amendment 12 in Committee, the Minister stated, if I understood him correctly, that food production does not need financial support because that comes to the farmer by way of profit from the sale of his produce. While that will be the case in some areas, that argument does not cover the situations where dairy farmers have been selling their milk at a loss; where hill and lowland farmers could suffer hugely from the loss of their BPS and a delay in introducing ELMS; or where farmers would like financial support to develop new crops or new processes for growing crops, particularly when these take some years to come into profit.

On Amendment 17, the Minister stated in her reply that

“Clause 4 already places a requirement on the Secretary of State to consider in as much detail as considered appropriate each financial assistance scheme that is in or will be in operation during the plan period. If deemed appropriate, this could include how the scheme is to give regard to the production of food in an environmentally sustainable way.”—[Official Report, 16/7/20; col. 1848.]


I accept that explanation and will not be moving Amendment 17.

Some Peers have said that this amendment is trying to do the same thing as Amendment 58. Amendment 58, while totally valid in its own right, is about a national food strategy, which is a perfectly valid plan, but my Amendment 12 is about the provision of financial assistance in order to promote the domestic production of food. It would give the Secretary of State total flexibility on how that was done; it could be through the findings of the food security report in Clause 17.

In summary, I do not think this is a particularly controversial amendment; it is non-party-political, it is supported by the NFU and it need not affect support for environmental measures. I will listen carefully to the Minister’s reply to Amendment 12, but I am strongly minded to move it to a vote.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am happy to be part of the debate on this group. I agree with almost all the sentiments that have been expressed, especially by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, as well as by the Green Party.

I am speaking today particularly to support the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. One thing that has not been talked about enough is the role of farmers. If the Bill is to do what I think everyone sitting in the Chamber and who is part of this debate at the moment wants to do, which is to ensure that healthy, affordable food is grown on our land and that our land becomes environmentally sustainable and healthy again, then we need a new generation of farmers, but the facts are pointing in a different direction.

The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, mentioned briefly that in 2017 one-third of all UK farmers were over 65. Almost more worrying than that is that, since 2005, those in the 35 to 44 age group have decreased. However, evidence from surveys points to people wanting to farm and to be involved in growing at a local level, on a big level and on a small level. But how are they going to do it? Land is too expensive and they struggle to scale finance and cover the high start-up costs. Responses to the Landworkers’ Alliance survey indicated that 61% of people responding to surveys wanted to access land, 46% needed finance and 54% struggled to access training. All believed that an average grant of around £20,000, which is not a fortune, would really set them on the road.

Another route for the young farmer is also being closed because of poor funding to local councils. Recent investigations have shown that county farms in England have halved in the last 40 years. This is a crisis. If we do not have farmers, particularly young farmers, then everything that we are talking about is not going to happen. When Michael Gove was Secretary of State for the Environment, he talked lavishly about equipping a new generation of farmers, but I am afraid the facts are now pointing in the other direction. You cannot be a farmer if you have nowhere to farm. If we value our farmers then we have to make some changes. With the right kind of investment and the right help, a lot of people could join our cause.

The other big issue is food security and local food. I mention briefly that for 10 years I ran the London Food Board. We instigated a scheme called Capital Growth, which enabled up to 100,000 people to have access to community gardens. In the process, we turned over 200 acres of London into small community farms where people could join in. We are now looking to take that scheme countrywide, but we need grants for that and land needs to be made available.

My final point is covered by the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and concerns training. In my years in London, I spent a lot of time in schools. It strikes me that, unless you are at a public school and the idea of a farm, as something possible, is somehow in your blood, you do not even think about it. I spent seven days, as many of us did, watching the debates on the first stages of the Agriculture Bill. I am absolutely guilty of this myself, but it was quite noticeable that the people who feel invested in the Agriculture Bill tend to be white and middle-aged, and an awful lot of us own land and are quite well off. It seems to me that we are missing a great trick in terms of diversity.

This Agriculture Bill belongs to all of us. It is about our land, our food, our health and our environment. Unless we take some steps to try to change the lack of diversity, we will head towards a greater separation between town and countryside. People have talked about litter being dropped, and there will be more of that because people do not feel that the countryside is theirs and that it belongs to all of us. Schemes that enable people in inner cities to grow vegetables on rooftops, under pylons and in sneaky little corners can really start to change attitudes. It is fantastically cost-effective, and I urge the Minister to look at this as the Government move forward.

In the meantime, I am very pleased to be part of this debate and to see agroecology and food security registering so high up among people’s concerns.

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, once again, I declare my interests, as set out in the register, as a farmer and landowner. I am very pleased to follow my noble friend Lady Boycott, as many of the points that I will make are complementary to hers.

My support for Amendment 11, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, is wholehearted. It involves the whole essence of the Bill, the aim of which is to take an important and profitable industry into a new era of post-CAP farming in this country on a sustainable and environmentally friendly basis.

The encouragement and support for commercial farming through productivity grants and the funding of ancillary activities are clearly stated, alongside the development of attractive environmental land management schemes—although I fear that the details are still unavailable, so we must put our trust in the Government delivering this. However, what is largely missing is support for new entrants into the industry, other than through encouraging some perhaps more elderly farmers to retire by offering them the balance of their basic payments. Although this will free up some land for new entrants, it is in itself not wholly positive, in that the land so freed up will go to the next farmer with no basic payment to cover the transition period. I fear that the most likely home for this land will be with neighbouring farmers or investors who enter farm contracting arrangements with large farm operations. The small farmer and the new entrant is likely to be squeezed, particularly as he is unlikely to have the financial backing that is available to established farmers and the outside investor.

That is why this amendment is so important. It enables the Bill to provide finance for young farmers and new entrants, who are very important to the industry if it is to grow and develop. These people will, unless extraordinarily fortunate, not have easy access to finance, as they will not have the assets and other security to offer banks and other lenders. Buildings, machinery, equipment and livestock are all expensive. As the land may well be held through a tenancy or other time-limited arrangement, obtaining a loan on acceptable terms will be difficult—hence the need to make it attractive for landowners to let land to such new entrants.

In addition, access to training is key if we are to encourage and help develop new entrants into the industry. The addition of this small paragraph in the purposes for providing financial assistance will help the industry to offer an attractive farming business proposition to those aspiring to a career in it, independent of established farm businesses that might not be able to offer them the same prospects. It also has substantial application to the tech-savvy who see a future in small, capital-intensive farming but who lack land and buildings.

I also support Amendment 12, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, as it clearly sets out the very purpose and essence of the Bill.

Finally, I support Amendment 20, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, as it recognises that with changing circumstances, such as limits on movement caused by disease and of course new technology, peri-urban land becomes increasingly relevant to agriculture, horticulture and sometimes trees.