Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
Main Page: Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Labour - Life peer)Farming Industry: Support
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I declare an interest through my involvement at Rothamsted.
Last year, we supported the NFU’s powerful campaign for Britain’s high animal welfare and food standards to be protected by law in the Agriculture Bill. Sadly, the Government rejected that call. Instead, the compromise Trade and Agriculture Commission can comment on trade deals only retrospectively, when the deal has been done, rather than being a partner in the process, which is what we proposed.
As a result, we have an Australian deal that would increase beef exports to the UK by more than 60 times their 2020 levels, despite Australia’s notoriously poor environmental standards and use of substances banned in the UK, as noble Lords described. New Zealand’s lamb production costs are 63% lower than the UK’s, giving it a huge trade advantage.
The winners in these trade deals are the huge farms and megacorporations of Australia and New Zealand. The losers are British farmers, in particular those who run small family farms. Add into this mix the current labour shortages in the food supply chain and you can understand why many farmers feel let down by this Government. As Neil Parish, the Conservative chair of the Commons environment committee, said recently:
“We are seeing our industry slowly being destroyed”.
I ask the Minister: is it true that Priti Patel refused to meet the NFU to discuss the labour shortages? Does the Minister agree with many noble Lords that we need to resolve this shortage on a long-term basis? Does she agree with the NFU and the Opposition that we should maintain Britain’s self-sufficiency in food production at a minimum of 60%? Does she agree that the Department for International Trade should put our high-quality standards and great British produce at the forefront of future trade deals, rather than as an afterthought, which is currently the case?