Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

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

Going back to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, we believe that there is an important future, particularly for new entrants, and we must consider how to ensure that new entrants come along. I am mindful of what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, said, but that new entry route is very important and is continuing work. On that basis, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, this has been a fantastically interesting debate and I very much support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and many others to do with county farms and the length of tenancies, especially what the Minister was just saying about the variety of agriculture.

However, there is a gap here: urban agriculture. When I ran the London Food Board, which I began in 2008, we started a scheme called Capital Growth to create community gardens in London. The plan was to create 2,012 by 2012, which we did and, in fact, today —I have just checked on the website, where you can type in your postcode to find your nearest garden—we have 2,553 community gardens covering about 250 acres of London and producing £288,000 worth of produce every year.

The thing about urban agriculture is that, for a kid growing up in an urban school on an estate in a poor area, the idea of ever being a farmer is as remote as me thinking I could go to the moon. It is not just that they would not be a farmer; there would be nobody who had a father who was a farmer. Therefore, the introduction of community gardening is vital, not only in educating people but in helping them take the first step on the way to becoming growers and custodians of the land and setting up small businesses. Because I visited so many, I know that many supply restaurants and supermarkets. There are wonderful places where they grow hops and make their own beer, which becomes an industry. Even in these tiny spaces, you can do this.

The social benefits are dramatic—the police, doctors and community leaders all favour this—but it is also extremely cheap, and it means that people get an education about growing. I have listened to almost all of this debate and, all the way through, we have talked about agriculture as though it can happen only in the country. That is not so; it is a fact that it can happen in cities. You see it towns such as Incredible Edible Todmorden, and in schools. I have a proposal in with the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, who is very enthusiastic. I would very much like the Minister’s support for us to take this project countrywide. It is good for your health, it teaches you to grow food and it is fantastic for the environment.

I will share one small detail. There are hives all over London. At one point, we had more hives than we could supply with flowers, but then we balanced that up. A study was done in Paris about the honey that is produced there—96 different flowers went into the taste of that honey. We held annual honey competitions, and we had honey that went from almost clear, or almost white, through to something that looked like treacle. You could tell the honey that had come from the lime trees in particular parks. It gave people an enormous sense of belonging, and put people on the first step to agriculture. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb said that councils should have allotments. We realised a year and a half in that an allotment was an impossibility because, when you get an allotment, you are saying that the land must be there in perpetuity. We had “meanwhile leases”, which means they can be taken back; that would be a great way forward.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I believe that the noble Baroness made a speech rather than asking a question but I have noted it all. I approve of gardening, community gardening and the production of food.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Northbrook]

My Lords, I rise to support the general principle in this group of amendments of more regular reports on food security, although I am not sure whether they should be yearly or three-yearly.

I wish to speak to my Amendment 165 to Clause 17, concerning the

“Duty to report to Parliament on UK food security”.

My amendment fine-tunes the wording of subsection (2), stating that the data analysed in the report “must”—rather than the vague word “may”—include the matters covered in paragraphs (a) to (e). A number of amendments already tabled relate to reporting on food security. Given the period of uncertainty ahead for farmers as we leave the single market and customs union and strike up new trade deals, this reporting should be much more frequent than once every five years. Given the importance of a domestic food supply, it is paramount that the Government re-examine this aspect of the Bill through the lens of the coronavirus crisis. This amendment is an important addition, ensuring that all the matters listed in subsection (2) are included in that food security report when it is produced.

[Baroness Boycott [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 166. In doing so, I thank its supporters, the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. I also support everything just said by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. I was lucky enough to sit on the House of Lords committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, which found many cracks and flaws in the food system.

My amendment looks not just at food security, as I want to consider household food security. Sufficient food nationally does not mean that individual households can access it in sufficient quantity, let alone that it is sufficiently healthy food, as pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. Since April 2019, the Government have been measuring food insecurity as part of their Family Resources Survey. This data will be available early next year. The Food Standards Agency also collects data on household food insecurity, as part of the Food and You survey. Both surveys are internationally recognised and peer reviewed.

In essence, the Government are already doing this; they are collecting the data on which this amendment would have them report. So, this is not an onerous amendment—it is very simple and cost-neutral. The Government are already doing the work. My amendment simply asks that the information be regularly laid before Parliament. If we do not accept this amendment, the Government will be sending a clear message to the millions who struggle to access healthy food that their hunger and problems are not a priority.

We know that more that 2,000 food banks have become embedded in our welfare system. Even before the pandemic, millions in the UK were food insecure. Now, millions more have joined them. Covid-19 has seen food insecurity levels more than double. Refusing to report to Parliament on food insecurity at a household level lets that problem remain hidden. It is only by knowing the true scale of UK hunger that we can start to mitigate it. We should do this annually because unless you measure something, you cannot change it. In a country as rich as ours, no one should go to bed hungry. Accepting this amendment, which is cost-neutral and simple, would demonstrate that the Government are willing to treat the systemic and worsening problem of food insecurity—in a family, every night, in their kitchen—with the seriousness that it deserves.

[Baroness Parminter (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to be speaking between the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, with whom I sat on the House of Lords committee that produced the report Hungry for Change, about which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and other noble Lords have been so complimentary.

I speak in support of my Amendment 169 in this group. I am grateful for the support of other noble Lords who have added their names to it. It addresses how, if we are to be food secure in this country, we need to ensure that the minimum amount of food is wasted—yet, in the list of data that will be provided in the food security report to inform policy thinking on our future resilience and food security, there is no mention of food waste.

There are currently significant levels of on-farm food waste in this country. In 2019, WRAP estimated that about 3.6 million tonnes of food is surplus, and waste occurs on farm every year. That is equivalent to about 7% of the total annual UK food harvest. There is huge potential to reduce the amount of surplus and waste by promoting best practice, with new insights being good for growers, businesses, the climate and feeding our people.

One of the priority areas in Clause 1 of the Government’s Environment Bill is resource efficiency and waste reduction. We need better synergy between the Environment Bill and the Agriculture Bill, and a way to achieve that is for us to see where the main problems with food waste are in the supply chain. To do that, we need the data to cover each part of the supply chain. My amendment would provide for that, so that we have a food security report that does the job that we need it to do.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

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

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

I acknowledge the support from all sides of the House for all that we can do to encourage climate change mitigation, but I believe that that intention is already fully provided in Bill.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I add my support for Amendment 272. I shall make a few points, while being mindful of what the Minister just said.

Healthy land is also healthy food. At the moment so much of our acreage is given over to growing grains that end up in very cheap, white, processed bread and the like. These fields are covered in chemicals. Any move that we can make in the right direction not only improves our biodiversity—agriculture is to blame for the 80% loss that has been suffered across the world—but is a win-win situation. I do not understand why the Government appear to be afraid of setting a target. We cannot make this target without agriculture being part of it; it is too big a part of our system.

Henry Dimbleby is producing a report for the Government, and I am very proud to say that I am an adviser on it. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that an interim report is coming soon. If the Agriculture Bill does not set up sufficient pillars and legislation to change the way we farm, which can then change the way we eat, Henry Dimbleby’s terrific report will not have the impact that it needs.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

I agree with everything the noble Baroness has said about healthy land meaning healthy food. The Bill is designed to do all that we can to encourage farmers to produce healthy land. We do not have a sector-specific target for agriculture because the Committee on Climate Change advised that emissions reductions would be needed in all sectors. We know that to achieve net zero more is needed from this sector, and we are looking to reduce agricultural emissions controlled directly within the farm boundary with a broad range of cost-effective measures, primarily through improvements in on-farm efficiency and land use change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a farmer and landowner, as set out in the register. I shall speak to Amendments 202, 203, 204 and 205 in my name. The basic purpose of these amendments is to set the conditions in which future delegated legislation under the auspices of this Bill is fair, transparent, responsive, proportionate and equitable.

Amendment 202, on publishing information related to producer organisation grants, seeks to delete the requirement to publish grant application decisions online. Such a requirement is disproportionate, and the publication could contain commercially sensitive information that buyers could seek to use against the producer organisation.

Amendments 203, 204 and 205 relate to competition law. I fear there are no baubles here; we begin to get technical. The Competition Act 1998 contains the following exemption in relation to agricultural products:

“The Chapter I prohibition does not apply to an agreement to the extent to which it relates to production of or trade in an agricultural product and—


(a) forms an integral part of a national market organisation;


(b) is necessary for the attainment of the objectives set out in Article 39 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union; or


(c) is an agreement of farmers or farmers’ associations (or associations of such associations) belonging to a single member State which concerns—


(i) the production or sale of agricultural products, or


(ii) the use of joint facilities for the storage, treatment or processing of agricultural products, and under which there is no obligation to charge identical prices.”


I did not write that.

As currently drafted, the Agriculture Bill removes this exemption and replaces it with exemptions relating specifically to producer organisations, associations of producer organisations and recognised interbranch organisations. In doing this, the current exemption for agreements, which is necessary for the attainment of the objectives set out in Article 39 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union—in other words, the common agricultural policy objectives—is removed. There does not appear to be any justification for the removal of this exemption, particularly during the period when the UK’s domestic agricultural policy is being developed. If an agreement between farmers is necessary to achieve the current CAP objectives, it should remain exempt from the prohibition of agreements contained in Chapter 1 of the Competition Act 1998. The removal of block exemptions from specific aspects of competition law, with no clear justification, is concerning. It is necessary to understand whether there is any objective and sensible justification for removing the existing agricultural exemption. I would be most grateful for the Minister’s comments.

[Baroness Boycott [V]]

My Lords, I would first like to add my voice to the praise of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, for Christine Tacon while she was in the role of Groceries Code Adjudicator. It is a very important role, and I would like to hear whether the Minister plans to beef it up and give her more powers.

Following what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said about animal welfare and the need for someone to look over it, it occurs to me that someone in a similar position to the Groceries Code Adjudicator, overlooking the welfare of animals with the power to fine and bring people to book, might be worth looking at.

I am here to make a brief intervention to support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, because I am a bit obsessive about fungi and feel that they are overlooked. They were once classified as plants because they come out of the soil and have rigid cell walls, but are now placed independently in their own kingdom with equal rank to animals and plants. In fact, they are nearer animals than plants.

An astonishing though not well-known fact, which I thought your Lordships might like to know, is that the world’s largest living organism is thought to be a honey fungus measuring 3.4 miles. It is across the Blue Mountains of Oregon and estimated to be 8,650 years old. Obviously, what we know better are varieties such as mushrooms, which are important to our diet and packed with vitamins and minerals. But they are also incredibly important to research. Penicillin, the foundation of all our modern medicine, comes from the fungus Penicillium. The everyday product yeast is also a fungus. While some can make you ill, they are essential in chemicals and drug manufacture. I know, as I travel to South America quite a lot, that scientists know that there is much more to discover about this amazing microscopic world.

From the point of view of the Agriculture Bill, fungi have the most enormous environmental benefit. They feed on dead organic matter, including leaf litter, soil and, of course, dead animals. They recycle 85% of the carbon from dead organic matter and release locked-up nutrients to be used by other organisms. This makes fungi completely essential to the ongoing health of our ecosystems. Sustainable life would not have a prayer without this magical, often microscopic, and too often ignored living group. This speech was to bring this to the Committee’s attention, and to say that I hope it maintains a proper place somewhere in the Bill.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 197 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and Amendment 207 in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and I thank them for their support.

Amendments 197 and 207 seek to achieve the same aim, which is to ensure proper scrutiny of the new supply chain measures being introduced under the Bill, which are to be greatly welcomed. I too congratulate and pay tribute to the Groceries Code Adjudicator, Christine Tacon, and her team for all that they have achieved under the code. The adjudicator has done a very good job in regulating the relationships between the major retailers and their direct suppliers.

However, I believe there has been a major regulatory gap in respect of relationships further upstream in the supply chain involving primary producers, the first purchasers and processors—what I refer to as the indirect supply chain. While it is good news that the Bill attempts to plug that gap, it is disappointing that seemingly little thought has been given to how the new arrangements contained in the Bill are to be governed. I understand that there have been discussions between officials and interested parties, and within those it has been suggested that for some reason the Rural Payments Agency could provide the oversight for these aspects of the Bill. I beg to differ. The RPA is not the appropriate body. It lacks the necessary skills, capacity and gravitas to be able to adequately deal with these aspects of the Bill, and is in any event sufficiently employed with its daily work.

Although the Bill is sponsored by Defra, it would be good to see a little joined-up thinking within the Government so that Defra and BEIS were on the same page in their approach to this. BEIS would like to expand the remit of the Groceries Code Adjudicator to cover these new and important provisions, thus creating one single regulator from farm to fork. I hope that Defra will hold the upper hand and ensure that supply chains are functioning well for the long-term benefit of UK citizens, and the Groceries Code Adjudicator is the right body and team to do that.

These matters were considered in a recent review of the role and remit of the Groceries Code Adjudicator, and it is disappointing that at that stage BEIS decided against an expansion of the adjudicator’s remit. However, now that Defra has identified the need in the Bill for further supply chain provisions, with which I wholeheartedly agree, it seems perfectly sensible to give responsibility for the oversight of those arrangements to a body that is tried and tested and already has skills and expertise in this area. Without an adequate regulator identified in the Bill, we run the risk that the provisions on supply chains will simply not be adequately administered or enforced. As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, those who have co-signed Amendment 207 and I have identified, the Groceries Code Adjudicator is the right place for this work to be conducted.

With regard to the wider remit, there are many reasons to include the indirect supply chain. More often than not, they are small growers or producers. It is very difficult for them to bring a complaint. I would like to see an own-initiative investigation started by the Groceries Code Adjudicator because it is difficult to rely completely on complaints from small producers and growers, which can so easily be identified with those with whom they have the contract and so fear losing the contract. With those few words, I commend Amendment 207 and support Amendment 197.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

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

On Amendment 53, I am obviously interested in and am a keen proponent of urban, vertical and such farming types, but I wonder whether those are necessarily public goods. As I said in debate last week, many exciting agritech areas are getting lots of investment and support, all of which contribute positively to the options available to us, but I am conscious of the definition of “public goods”. I would appreciate it if the Minister could address whether such agritech products are necessarily public goods.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to be in this debate and to follow the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, Lady Meacher and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for supporting my amendment. I agree with pretty much all the amendments proposed, and agree entirely with the provision and principle of ELMS, but I want to make a few points.

Of course, we must support the environmental goods that our farming can do, but if we do that without including the need to grow healthy food, we have in a sense lost the primary reason why we farm and have given it back to the market. By that, I mean the overwhelming power of the big retail producers, which has meant that so much land has been given over to grow grains which feed animals, or grains which are highly refined and end up in un-nutritious products such as cheap white bread and that so little of our land ends up producing the nutritious fruit and vegetables that we need.

I shall give a few facts and figures. The volume of home production decreased by 1.8% in 2019 to the lowest level that we have had for 20 years, despite its value having gone up. Imports have increased as well. Home production of vegetables contributes only about 54% of the total UK food supply. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and others have talked about our food security but it is bigger than that: it is about trying to support farmers to do the right thing to support our health. Some 31,000 premature deaths in the UK could be averted every year if we ate enough fruit and veg, yet according to the Food Foundation, of which I am a trustee, UK adults currently eat an average of just 2.5 portions of veg a day.

When the previous Agriculture Bill went through its Second Reading in the Commons, Michael Gove, then Secretary of State for Defra, said:

“Every measure in the Bill is designed to ensure that our farmers receive the support that they deserve to give us … healthy food.”


When challenged on why this was not in its Clause 1, he said that

“food production in this country is critical to the improvement of public health … we put the importance of improving public health at the heart of everything that we do”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/10/18; cols. 150-51.]

In answer to another question about whether that Bill would support the production of fruit and veg, he said that it was a critical issue. I therefore consider this Bill worryingly silent when it comes to healthy food production. It has to be a matter of strategic national interest and social justice that we ensure that our country is better able to feed itself with healthy, nutritious food and to protect itself from volatility.

Sustainable production must be central to this Bill—it cannot be seen as something to be left to the market—and that, I am afraid, takes money. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, spoke about the need for allotments and more growing spaces. When I ran the London Food Board, we had a project called Capital Growth and created 2,500 new community projects. It is tremendously successful and we are trying to roll it out across the country. However, at the end of the day, it accounts for a tiny amount of vegetables. The point is that, if we are to grow more, farmers need money. At the moment, a very small amount of our land is devoted to this. We have to understand that financial help is needed, first, to make the transition and, secondly, to get this produce to the market. All the other things that I have talked about in our debates on amendments—local food networks, local abattoirs and so on—are part of the same thing.

We know that we have terrible problems with obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. These are the results of a food system which is not working for us and our citizens. We have had a policy based on food corporations. We now have a unique opportunity to take this system back into public ownership and public concern.

Healthy food is a public good just as much as our NHS, and if we had better diets we would save that amazing institution about £2 billion a year. If we ate more local and seasonal fruit and vegetables, and if we bought from local producers, we could also reduce our carbon footprint, at the same time as improving our health, our land, our mental health and the mental health of our communities, which, as every noble Lord will have seen in the last few weeks, is an issue of such importance to our country.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, has indicated that he will not speak on this group, I call the next speaker on the list, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

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

However, if we are to build an international industry and take a part in what will be an international industry, it is important that we have strong engagement with real farmers. It is not enough to have these things driven through the R&D system. We want the wisdom, inventiveness, resourcefulness and accumulated experience of British farmers to play a part here. It ought to be that we equip farmers not just to be the customers of international R&D but to take part in and commission and be part of the push for change. I would like to see a good part of the flow, particularly for development beyond research, to come through farmers and for their choices to be what determine who gets the funding. I would like to see the Bill opened up to make that possible.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Curry, and I congratulate him on his school for kids to come to; I am sure they had a splendid time. I thoroughly endorse his amendment about education.

I add my support to Amendments 43 and 54 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. They are mostly about localisation, which also has a great part in education and the connection between citizens and food. While most of us understand that local food is a good thing, most of us have very little sense of how local food is produced. I am in Somerset; we have lots of supermarkets around and are just as divorced as you can be in a city. It can be very difficult. There are many reasons for this, but a key one is that local authorities have insufficient cash to provide the essential infrastructure to allow local food economies to flourish.

Here I divert briefly to my own experience of once running a smallholding in Somerset. We went into pig breeding and were lucky enough to have a local abattoir that dealt with our animals in a quick, precise and compassionate way. I remember being completely shocked on my first, nerve-racking trip to the abattoir, with two of my favourite pigs rattling around in the back of the trailer. We were early and had to wait, and I was amazed that outside the door to the slaughter room were four pigs happily snoozing in a companionable heap. This was as stress-free as it could be, the food miles were minimal and I was able to sell the meat in complete confidence that the animals had had a good life and a good death.

There has been a long-term decline in the number of abattoirs in this country. According to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare, there were 30,000 in 1930; that dropped to 249 in 2017, a 99% decrease. Of those, 25 are in danger of being shut. The alternative is huge abattoirs where animal welfare is low on the list and the distances need to be extensive and thus increase the stress and cost. I believe you cannot have a local food economy if you do not have a means of taking your animals to market.

I urgently recommend that the Government look at funding to restore local abattoirs within reach of most people, to ensure that we have a thriving economy. There are interesting examples globally that we could follow, such as the mobile abattoirs now introduced in France, New Zealand and Australia. We have one based in Nottinghamshire that believes its service can aid animal welfare and meat quality. It is something worth looking at.

The second thing I will talk about in support of the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is county farms. Recent investigations have shown that the number of county farms in England has halved over the last 40 years. Why does this matter? The county farm is a farm owned by the local authority and let out to young and first-time farmers, often at below the market rate. They are a vital first rung on the ladder for farmers in a sector that on the whole has incredibly high up-front capital costs—unless, of course, you are lucky enough to inherit. Through their provision of land and farm buildings, young people can become farmers. With the average age of farmers in this country at 60 and the price of land quite prohibitive, this is something we should really investigate and try to support.

Specifically, the acreage of county farms across England has plummeted from 420,000 in 1977 to just 215,000 now. For instance, Dorset Council just sold six of its county farms, 14% of its entire estate. When Michael Gove was Secretary of State for the Environment, he talked lavishly about equipping a new generation of farmers, but the facts all point in a different direction. You cannot be a farmer if you have nowhere to farm. If we value our farmers, local food and rural economies, community and county farms must not be allowed to slither into obscurity.

Finally, I will speak briefly about Amendment 47. I am a meat eater, but I want to eat meat that has been reared on pastures or in humane ways. Specifically, I do not want to eat chickens or any animals that have been grown in inhumane environments. The UK has come a long way in protecting and preserving standards of animal welfare, but there is one area in which we are not doing well, and that is local chicken production.

In the county of Herefordshire in particular, there is a rapid growth in the intensive chicken industry, which is generating a wave of vast industrial complexes across the landscape. The visual impact is not the only concern. Many environmental organisations are increasingly concerned by the growth and proliferation of these ILUs, particularly the impacts of ammonia, nitrogen deposition and phosphate on biodiversity and human health. These concerns include, but are not limited to, the pollution of water—streams, rivers and ponds. There has been news in the last few weeks of massive algae blooms in the River Wye, which are killing fish.

These chicken farms—which are owned not by British people but by global internationals—affect our health and environment. The companies, such as Cargill, contract with local farmers to put up the factories yet pay only farming rents and rates. These birds lead miserable lives and have miserable deaths, and this is something we should stop. Without a doubt, this leads to less good local practice and lower animal welfare standards. If we want to move towards a sustainable, holistic farming system in which local people can play their part, we have to work against these giant conglomerates.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and to agree with pretty much everything she has just said. I support Amendments 43 and 54 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

It is at times such as this that I realise that—although in the difficult circumstances it is highly commendable that we are operating this Committee in any sensible way at all—nevertheless, the sooner we can back to proper Committees, the better. Normally I would wait for the noble Baroness to move her amendments, then if I wanted to say something about them I would rise after her and comment. Given the hybrid Committee, I understand that the way in which we are now operating, with a speakers’ list, is essential, but it is nevertheless restrictive. I hope that when we come back in September, people will try to get back to normal Committees as quickly as possible, even if it means that a few people who are particularly restricted by Covid still have to come over the air, as it were. The basic Committee ought to be here. We also ought to be able to intervene and have a proper conversation. Committees in this House are traditionally and properly about conversations and discussions, not a series of speeches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb [V]]

My Lords, I am speaking to my four amendments in this group and I obviously heartily support Amendment 77, which was tabled by my noble friend Lady Bennett. My amendments are focused on improving animal welfare. They would also ensure that minimum standards are enforced and that no public money is given to the most harmful farming practices. Amendment 66 would prevent financial assistance being given to a number of cruel farming practices such as mutilations, including debeaking, tail docking and tooth pulling without anaesthetic. Castrating sheep with your teeth would also most definitely be included. The amendment would require publicly funded farmers to keep animals in species-appropriate numbers, not exceeding specified stocking densities or certified levels of illness and disease. Public money should not be used to support animal cruelty. That is the purpose of the amendment.

Amendments 125 and 136 would require the Secretary of State to consider animal welfare specifically when planning and reporting financial assistance. These amendments are important in putting animal welfare at the forefront of the Minister’s mind, and in ensuring that the health and happiness of our farm animals does not fall behind other priorities, such as profit.

Finally, while much of the Bill is focused on offering farmers and land managers a financial carrot, my Amendment 225 will bring a big stick for those who refuse to adopt even the most basic standards of environmental protection and animal welfare. I loathe the concept of new criminal offences, although I accept that sometimes they are necessary, and I think this is necessary. While the Government might not choose to adopt such a harsh approach as imposing criminal liability, I want at least to draw attention to the apparent lack of any plan to raise the standards of those who consistently fall behind and refuse to bring themselves up to modern standards of farming and land management. As always, I look forward eagerly to the Minister’s assurances on animal welfare and hope that he or she will specifically address what will be done about those farmers who lag behind.

[Baroness Boycott [V]]

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and all the amendments that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, just addressed. We currently have 65 billion farmed animals on this planet, and 80% of livestock is kept at the moment in various kinds of cage. That is a truly terrible thing for us all to know. They are kept in cruelty, in the main. I always say that if, as a country, we factory farmed Labradors, the whole country would grind to a halt in about two minutes. I used to keep pigs, I played football with them, and they are just as engaging as any dog.

I add my support to Amendment 77, which is about community engagement and involvement, and I want to bring to the Committee’s attention a scheme called Capital Growth, which I started when I worked for the then Mayor of London, who is now Prime Minister. We began it in 2008 with a plan to create 2,012 new community gardens in London. Now, 12 years later, we have 2,500. We have 200 acres of London that were derelict and are now growing gardens with 100,000 volunteers. I have listened today to many speeches, including the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, talking about city farms, which are much more difficult to achieve, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, talking very eloquently about rubbish. He mentioned the fact that if an environment is in decay, people do not keep it. What this scheme proved was that you can turn the most derelict area around, you can bring a community together and you can teach children, which has again been a big subject through the day. You can teach children that, indeed, spaghetti does not grow on trees, which one child said to me, or, as one noble Lord mentioned, that cheese is not a plant.

This was a cheap scheme. We spent very little money on it, it was very viable, and I hope that we can, as we run up to the climate talks in Glasgow, now postponed for a year, take this scheme countrywide. I am thrilled that the Minister for the Environment is interested and I hope, given that it is a very viable scheme and extremely cost-efficient, we can have it in every school. I have watched a school where there were 54 languages and the teacher was explaining mathematics to someone who had no English at all by holding out 12 beans and saying, “Plant these in three rows.” You can do magical things like that and I commend the scheme to the House. I am very pleased to be part of this debate and to support the various amendments, especially those around animal welfare.

[Lord Rooker [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to three of the amendments. Amendment 26, which I thoroughly support, reminds me of the situation when we went into government in 1997 and the department was MAFF; we are not talking about Defra. Jack, now my noble friend Lord Cunningham, who was the Minister, decided to split responsibility between me, on animal health in the middle of the BSE crisis, and Elliot Morley, on animal welfare. It was not creative tension, because we worked incredibly well together, but the fact is that these were two sides of the same coin—it is as simple as that. To separate them, it seemed self-evident to me, created a technical lacuna, and that should be corrected by accepting Amendment 26.

Direct Payments to Farmers (Crop Diversification Derogation) (England) Regulations 2020

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the decision to help farmers through this situation; the derogation is a very good idea for this year. Personally, I think it is a little late. Farmers are now experiencing a drought after all the rain, so they need the right support to cover this challenging year. Crop diversification is a cornerstone of a more resilient and nature-friendly farm system, and while the farmers should have flexibility in how they run their farms, they should also be strongly incentivised by the Government’s support and advice to undertake maximum diversification.

Science shows us that crop diversification, and indeed mixed farms with livestock, are better for soils, nature, the climate, natural pest and disease control, as well as much more. Growing crops in monocultures with too little variation creates huge problems, in my view creating fields that more resemble high-tech chemical factories than a farming system that is in tune with nature. Therefore, when the Agriculture Bill comes to the House for its Second and Third Readings, it is vital that we maximise its role in building a resilient and nature-friendly farming system.

However, I would caution that this derogation must be temporary. We all know that agriculture contributes hugely to the climate crisis, and the Agriculture Bill, which will support public goods and provide money for the same, must not be watered down by this temporary measure. What worries me is that we are going to experience more unpredictable weather as time goes by. This wet January and February, followed by the driest April and May, might become the pattern for years to come. Can the Minister assure me that this is a one-off for a particular year, and not the opening of a crack in the door that will allow farmers to grow monoculture crops in the future because we face similar weather disasters?

Food Supply and Security

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Boycott]

That the Virtual Proceedings do consider food supply and security in the United Kingdom in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Motion was considered in a Virtual Proceeding via video call.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)]

Good afternoon, my Lords. The Virtual Proceedings on the Motion in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, will now commence. The debate is time- limited to three hours.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to be able to introduce this debate today, which is timely and important. I especially thank my noble friends on the Cross Benches for choosing this debate out of so many excellent suggestions.

Warren Buffett once said, “When the tide goes out, you can see who’s swimming naked.” Covid-19 has revealed, once and for all, that our food system is no longer fit for purpose. True, it delivers cheap food, but it does so at a huge cost: to the environment, our health and our food security. Environmentally, the impacts are becoming alarmingly clear. Agriculture currently accounts for one-fifth of UK greenhouse gas emissions. Extensive pesticide use is devastating insect populations, fertiliser run-off is polluting our waterways, our soils are depleted, and monocultural production is damaging biodiversity. Our imported food also has impacts globally: agriculture is responsible for about 80% of deforestation worldwide, which reduces our ability to tackle climate change.

At the same time, human health suffers. In the UK, over half of adults are overweight and obese, 5% have diabetes and one-third of five year-olds have terrible tooth decay. An abundance of cheap food masks the fact that healthy foods are three times more expensive per calorie than unhealthy ones. Households in the bottom 10% of income would need to spend 74% of their household income to meet the Government’s own recommendations in the Eatwell Guide plate. This is not the Ritz; it is a very basic diet.

Finally, we have seen that our food security is at great risk. The system which delivers food to UK shelves is really complicated and much more vulnerable than we generally acknowledge. Our retailers rely on complicated global supply chains to deliver food to our supermarket shelves in a “just-in-time” process, leaving them with minimal stocks as a buffer against any shocks. We have simultaneously allowed our domestic food production to languish, particularly for perishable items such as fruit and vegetables—only 16% of fruit and 53% of vegetables are grown in the UK—which provides retailers and, of course, us with less assurance of stable supplies when trade barriers begin to be a concern. The worldwide food price crisis of 2007-08, which we all remember, showed us how easily a serious price crisis can emerge when the nations that dominate production of major global crops impose trade restrictions. It is extraordinary, but for both wheat and rice just five producing nations account for more than 75% of global exports.

Our recent experiences during Covid-19 show starkly what can happen when the system starts to creak. First, the poor health of our nation, and in particular the high levels of diabetes and hypertension—conditions that are absolutely linked with poor diets—have put many of our citizens at risk of Covid-19-related complications. In the USA, 48% of those who have been hospitalised for Covid-19 are obese; the evidence of the links between Covid-19 and obesity is rapidly emerging and can no longer be washed away.

In addition, all of us have experienced, for the first time in most of our lives, the slight alarm and panic that comes from seeing an empty shelf. I suspect that for most of us who are listening and for all of us in the House of Lords, this has been not much more than an inconvenience. We can rustle in the back of our store cupboards and use up long-forgotten tins and jars. But, quite frankly, panic buying is a luxury only for people who can afford it.

For many others, the pandemic has resulted in awful hardship. The Food Foundation—on which I am lucky enough to sit as a trustee—has produced recent figures that suggest that 8 million adults and 2 million children have experienced food insecurity since the lockdown started. Many households in this country were struggling to afford food even before the pandemic, but the recent widespread job losses have vastly increased these numbers. Attendance at food banks is soaring: up 81% in Trussell Trust food banks and 59% in food banks that are part of the Independent Food Aid Network. If food prices rise in the medium term—and there are lots of reasons to believe that they will—the position of these households will become even more fragile.

Farmers in the UK are struggling without access to migrant workers. Farmers here and in southern Europe, where so much of our fresh produce is sourced, are already delaying and reducing spring plantings due to the unpredictability. As we approach the British picking season for soft fruit, salad and many other vegetables, the labour shortage will almost inevitably have an impact on food prices, especially on the price of those healthy foods that people so much need. Twenty countries have already introduced export bans and restrictions since the start of the pandemic. If these become more extensive, the prices for imported staples and perishables could also start to rise.

In the light of all these problems, we have a real need for government leadership and coherent food policy. It is more important than ever. Though I applaud the Government for the efforts they made to provide those who are shielding with food, much of that food has been, frankly, really unhealthy. I think we have all seen images of donuts being delivered to care homes and the like. They have also made attempts to replace free school meals with monetary vouchers but, as I think many noble Lords will know, the French system that was brought in, Edenred, has had a catastrophic technical failure and a lot of people have been unable to access their vouchers.

There has been good financial protection during the coronavirus pandemic through the job retention scheme and a bit of an uplift to universal credit, but in other respects the response has not been adequate. At such times, we need and expect leadership, effective co-ordination and clear, decisive action. Instead, the Government have made food supply issues the responsibility of the supermarkets—“business as usual”—and food insecurity the business of charities. Support for food producers has been almost completely absent.

The closure of vast swathes of the food service sector has exacerbated the strains on the food system, making it inevitable that consumers would buy more food from retailers—30% of calories are usually eaten outside the home. This has led to things such as the milk surplus, because certain food cannot be diverted at the right time. We needed a massive effort to re-engineer existing food supply chains, but, unfortunately, the retail sector has been gifted an extra £2 billion in sales versus this time last year. That is a staggering amount of profit. An opportunity was missed to make creative use of existing catering and restaurant businesses. Small local cafes and farm shops could have been kept in business, supplying food to the vulnerable. Instead, the Government fell back on engaging almost exclusively with the big supermarkets on food supply issues, which has, in effect, concentrated more power in their hands—although I must say that they have done a pretty good job.

Similarly, the Government have relied on charitable food aid to plug the gaps in their inadequate response to the problem of food insecurity. The frankly heroic efforts of these organisations ought to be applauded every night, but the scale of the challenge is unprecedented, and there is just not enough food or volunteer capacity to feed all vulnerable people through local authority and charitable means.

Suffering from cuts to welfare assistance, in a lot of cases local authorities are able only to send someone to the local food bank. Some local authorities—Bristol, for instance—which had existing strong food partnerships in place before the crisis have been able to scale this up, but, at the moment, people’s experience of support from the state is dictated by their postcode. We must have a national assessment of need and a nationally co-ordinated, ambitious, money-first approach to deal with the ballooning food insecurity problem.

Alongside this, our food producers have been neglected, instead of recognised and supported as the essential sector they are. Our farmers need support and investment to tide them through this period of uncertainty. In the longer term, I hope the Government will recognise the important role that small producers can play in boosting our resilience and seek to deliver for them a more equal playing field.

During this crisis, the smallest of our producers have turned out to be the most flexible and quick on the ground. Some veg box schemes have more than doubled the number of boxes that they distribute, and most now have really long waiting lists for new customers. Horticultural producers have received decades of under- investment compared with other farming sectors. For the record, subsidies make up just 10% of their average farm income, compared with 79% for farmers in the cereals business. Quite modest ongoing government support could transform all these local networks, providing much healthier food and a really good, resilient network.

We need to recognise the underlying flaws in our food system that this episode has revealed. We must build back better, creating more resilient, healthier and fairer food systems for our future. Instead of washing their hands and passing the buck back to supermarkets, charities and farmers, we desperately need the Government to show leadership. We are facing an unprecedented moment, one full of risk but also full of opportunity. We must make our food system resilient to economic shocks and environmental and climate risks. It must be less dependent on last-minute deliveries of vital perishable goods from overseas. We must diversify food retail options to create more vibrant local food economies.

We must prioritise our nation’s health. Food and health campaigners have long known of the terrible effects of bad nutrition—there is nothing new about this—but Covid has brought it into stark relief. I find it astonishing that we still measure our global success in a health sense by just the number of years lived, and that life expectancy seems to be a goal above quality of life and health. People are literally dying—quickly this time, rather than slowly—because they eat bad food. This is a chance to start to change that. We must not go back to the good old bad old days of “stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap” processed food. We must stop spending 98.5% of all the food advertising budget on processed food. We have to step in and intervene. We have literally proved that our lives, and the quality of our lives, depend on it.

Government should give businesses that promote healthy eating a real head start, rebuild our nation’s horticulture sector and put in place much more robust economic safety nets, so that everyone can afford a diet that protects their health. A recent poll by the RSA suggests that only 9% of people want to go back to normal after the pandemic. The British public are showing a big appetite for change. We should use this opportunity to start fixing what has been shown to be broken.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Boycott]

My Lords, thank you so very much for such a wonderful, varied and interesting series of contributions. I learned such a lot from them all and will read everybody’s contributions carefully, because I was incapable of taking enough notes and listening at the same time. I particularly thank the Minister for his continued work in this area. I know that his commitment to all the subjects we have talked about today is real, valid and strong.

As we have seen today, food touches every area of our lives, as well as every corner of our wonderful planet. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, we need to “eat the view”. It might be fanciful to say, but I have always believed that if we could get the food system right, we would live in a happier, healthier, fairer and very much more environmentally just world.

Food is not a commodity, like a T-shirt or cardboard box. It is a magical substance that enables us all, and all our fellow creatures, to live and thrive. Everything in our world begins and happens because of the way we convert sunlight. We do not actually do it; plants do it for us. They feed us to become capable of things. If you think about it, everything begins that way. It cannot really be replicated. But in these dark times, it is really important to remember that if you plant a green bean into the soil and give it some water, it will reward you in a few weeks with an enormous amount of extraordinarily wonderful food. This is a magic that science cannot recreate—and one we should treasure and learn to pass on to our children.

What food is not is a series of images that many of us see. It is not one of the saddest ones I know—workers in China wearing specially adapted vests so that they can pollinate fruit trees, because they have managed to kill all the bees due to the overuse of pesticides. Food is not pathetic chickens living in factories where they are allocated less than the size of an A4 piece of paper to live in. I read yesterday in the New York Times that because of the crisis in America and the fact that the chickens are getting a bit bigger because of problems in the supply line, they are suffocating them with foam because they cannot think how else to get rid of them. Food is not an orangutan dying thousands of miles away from me in order that I can get a cheap chocolate mousse in my local supermarket, because that orangutan’s habitat has been cut down to produce palm oil. Food is definitely not the aisles and aisles of cheap snacks in our supermarkets that, when you look at the ingredients, contain no living product at all.

I have now worked in this world for about 12 years. I think that my aim is quite simple, but it is extraordinarily hard to achieve. I believe we all have the right to have access to healthy and affordable food, regardless of where we live, how much money we have, whether we are old, ill or vulnerable, and whether we are a child or a senior in the last days of our life. It should be a right, in much the same way as we think that education and healthcare are rights. Quite frankly, we now see that if we do not make decent, healthy food a right for all of us, we will end up burdening all those systems. I know, as many of your Lordships probably do, that when children are not fed over the summer holidays, they cannot start off again well at school. This is so important, yet as a Government and as a country—on all sides of the political chain—we have been very happy since the war, when we last had a food strategy, to leave it to private companies to dictate the way we eat. If you are a private company in a capitalist economy, at the end of the day you want to sell more product made from cheaper ingredients, and that is where we are today.

However, there is hope on the horizon. We have the Agriculture Bill, which was debated yesterday in the Commons and, I gather, will be coming to this House after Whitsun. We have a food strategy in Defra. It is slightly on the back-burner now but it will come back. There is now much discussion in the world about the best use of land and about restorative agriculture. It would be a great tragedy if, after all this—if after seeing what Covid-19 has revealed—we returned to business as usual. As my noble and good friend Lord Krebs said, food is the one thing that we cannot do without, but certainly it is the one thing that we can really try to get right in the future.

I hope that, like me, everybody has got a great deal from today’s session. I hugely look forward to having lots of conversations with people—something that I cannot do face to face at the moment but can do online. I hope that, in the days to come, what we have learned from this debate will inform and take the process forward.

Motion agreed.

Fruit and Vegetable Harvest

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Thursday 30th April 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Boycott]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that any fruit and vegetables ready for harvest during the COVID-19 pandemic are harvested.

The Question was considered in a Virtual Proceeding via video call.

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

My Lords, I declare my farming interests as set out in the register. We are mobilising a British workforce to help farmers. The Pick for Britain website is a recently launched joint Defra and industry initiative to support this effort, alongside the DWP’s Find a Job website, to signpost roles and guidance to workers and employers. We will continue to work with growers so that customer demand for excellent British fruit and vegetables is met.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

I thank the Minister for his reply. I have seen the website; the level of publicity is very low at the moment and not many people know about it. The cheap wages that have been paid over the years to mostly migrant workers have been what I am prepared to call “the dirty little secret”. What wages are the Government considering paying to the army of British people who are going to be taken on board? What is going to happen to fruit and vegetable prices in the shops, and how will that impact on families who are already struggling to eat anything, let alone a healthy diet?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, there is going to be a more fulsome public-facing launch of the campaign to highlight the roles available from late May onwards and to encourage people to apply. Agribusiness must comply with current UK employment law. As I said in my earlier reply, we are all very conscious of the nutritional value of British fruit and vegetables and of the importance of their being available at a respectable price.