Small Farms and Family Businesses

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, for bringing this debate today and enabling us to talk about these issues.

I welcome the valedictory speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, not because she is going but because it gives me the chance to say something about her. She has done so much for women’s health, in particular maternity care and empowering women to choose the sort of birth that they want. She then went on, among other things, to look at pelvic mesh repairs, which had not been much talked about and were affecting many women’s lives so adversely.

I first met the noble Baroness here through a shared interest in food and health, and the food and health agenda is very relevant to today’s debate. One of the biggest issues facing farmers today—I suggest that it is bigger than APR—is the state of the food system itself. Who sells what to whom, and where do the profits go at each stage of that transaction? Farmers produce good, wholesome food; how then can it end up as ultra-processed food?

The report of the Food, Diet and Obesity Committee, chaired by my noble friend Lady Walmsley, concluded that the Government should develop a

“comprehensive and integrated long-term food strategy”

to fix our broken food system. Sue Pritchard, the CEO of the Food, Farming and the Countryside Commission, said:

“There is a clear and urgent economic case for changing the UK food system … As things are, Big Food companies are profiting from developing, making and marketing unhealthy food, leaving people with too many unhealthy options—while farmers struggle to make ends meet”.


There you have it. That is why farmers are particularly struggling. It did not start with this Government.

There are things not in the power of the Government that really are affecting farmers very adversely, including extreme weather challenges—that has to be a huge one—and biosecurity incidents, as was highlighted at Question Time today. Then there are the things that the Government are responsible for, such as the tax changes. I am sure that much will be said about APR today, so I will simply say that I feel that the Government set the threshold too low, especially considering land prices.

I want to talk more about the massive increase in land values that has had such a swathe of negative effects. It is much harder to enter farming now, for example. I believe that some of the massive increases in land values should be returned to the public. The Government need to devise how to do that, rather than hit simply on family farms.

Guy Singh-Watson, who made Riverford Farm in Devon so successful, with its vegetable box scheme, made the point that he farms both in Devon and in the French Vendée. In France, the price of land is less than a 10th of its equivalent in Devon. Why is that? I spent a bit of time in France, and I have seen that you cannot just buy up land speculatively because the Government make sure that the people buying it are serious farmers and are qualified to farm. Even the local mayor has a say in that. Some noble Lords may say that there is too much control there, but it has meant that land is available for genuine farmers.

Economy

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, in his excellent introduction, the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, spoke of a green direction of travel for the economy. We must think of that direction of travel when reviewing the form that the future economy may take. When does the Minister think that the green economy and the economy will merge? Surely the economy of the 21st century must be one that respects the fact that low carbon is a given. It needs to create jobs and value, but also respect the environment and recognise that resource extraction is finite. Many smart companies already vastly reduce their use of virgin materials—for example, they reduce and recycle the water they use—thereby reducing their costs and their impact on the planet. A 21st-century economy should bring together industry and ecosystems. In fact, it is a completely new paradigm from that of the 20th century economy.

When the Prime Minister, David Cameron, signed the climate pledge in February, he talked of the need to accelerate the transition to a competitive, energy-efficient, low-carbon economy. However, since the election, we have seen no measures to grow that low-carbon economy—quite the reverse. As the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, mentioned, we have seen the cancellation of the zero-carbon homes policy six months before its full implementation, despite significant investment from house builders and their supply chain. The zero-carbon building commitment, due to be implemented in 2019, has also been cancelled, despite huge support from the construction sector.

Investment in renewables has faltered, given the Government’s decision to end subsidies for onshore wind and further free up the oil and gas sectors. In transport, new rules for vehicle tax will result in owners of the most polluting and most efficient cars paying the same after the first year, despite the UK car industry investing in design and technology to make it one of the world leaders in fuel-efficient vehicles. The car industry expects that tax change to reduce UK sales of those efficient vehicles.

I turn to agriculture. Bees, pollinators worth more than £650 million to the economy, remain under threat, with no real action on the national pollinator strategy. Indeed, the Government have given permission to restart the use of neonicotinoids—the pesticides implicated in pollinator decline.

All of that flies in the face of the data that demonstrate that money spent on protecting the natural environment is a wise investment. The Government’s national ecosystem assessment states that if the UK’s ecosystems were properly protected, they could add an extra £30 billion to the UK economy, whereas neglect and loss of the free services that nature gives us may well cost as much as £20 billion to the economy every year. The Natural Capital Committee has shown that spending on biodiversity protection provides a real and significant return on investment: £10 billion is spent by tourists in England’s rural areas each year. That is in large part due to the quality of the natural environment.

The Exchequer must provide co-funding to draw down England’s European agricultural fund for rural development. Any cuts to that funding would mean sending money back to Europe, losing a further £3 for every £1 that the Government might consider to be saved. Cutting that co-funding will render quite impossible the Conservative manifesto commitment to spend £3 billion on the environment through the CAP and to plant 11 million trees.

When you talk of the economy, you need to think of the green economy, because that is the 21st-century economy. At the rate the Government are going, we risk being left far behind those countries that are really implementing the green economy.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, the gracious Speech mentioned continuing work on the issue of Iran and nuclear weapons. That is an important but only small part of the nuclear weapons challenge. The gracious Speech was silent on the fact that all the work to go into the next Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, which will take place in May 2015, needs to take place this year. The NPT is an opportunity that comes up every five years for the world to take a step away from the abyss. We have heard a lot today about instability and conflagration; that has been painted very vividly in this Chamber. If noble Lords take into account that proliferation is a fact of life as well, they will see that we really need this NPT to succeed.

One of the inadvertent consequences of fixed-term Parliaments for the UK is that, as in 2010, the next conference will fall at election time. The preparations for the 2010 conference were very thorough. The UK went into it with a constructive and active stance, but then political attention was entirely diverted because of the election. There was then a different Government with somewhat different policies—our coalition Government—and there was a change of stance from the UK during the conference. It confused the other countries, which were trying to get somewhere with that 2010 conference. We have to solve that issue before the 2015 conference. I do not have the answers, but the Government and all the political parties here need to come to some consensus on our contribution to the NPT. UK government policy is now to rely more and more on the NPT as the forum where these nuclear issues will be solved.

I attended the UN open-ended working group that Ban Ki-moon called in Geneva. Our ambassador’s absence was a matter of a lot of speculation. People asked me why the UK did not attend. I asked some Parliamentary Questions when I came back and I was told that the UK Government think that the NPT Review Conference is the place for such discussions. I then asked some more questions about why we did not go to Norway or Mexico when those countries hosted two conferences on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. The reply was of course the same: that the forum for such things is the NPT Review Conference. The Government are putting all our eggs in the NPT basket. We owe it to the rest of the world to ensure we have a coherent stance that will carry over from one Government to the next. Earlier in the debate a noble Lord—I am sorry, I cannot remember who—called for more involvement from us in international treaties. This is an absolutely classic case for more involvement.

Earlier, I mentioned increasing proliferation, and I have taken some press from the past couple of weeks. On 4 June this year, there was this from New Delhi:

“India’s first indigenously built nuclear submarine quietly pushed out of its base for sea trials … India will join a club of just six nations with nuclear submarines carrying ballistic missiles”—

and a doctrinal challenge, as India has always separated the delivery mechanism from weapons. Who knows what will happen now there have been elections: that may not change, but it may. My second bit of press states:

“China has deployed three nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines to a naval base in the South China Sea”.

That was reported on 28 May. These are just intentional actions. If noble Lords were to look at accident reporting, they would see that on 4 June the Daily Telegraph reported a “close to death” situation in a nuclear submarine when the air conditioning failed. We have increasing proliferation and the continual possibility of accidents: as more and more fissile material is used, it is more and more possible to have accidents.

Finally, I refer noble Lords to the European leadership group, some members of which come from this Parliament—indeed, some from your Lordships’ House. That group makes it quite plain just how important this NPT conference is in addressing these matters. Its statement, which came out very recently, underlines that the situation in Ukraine and many of the issues that noble Lords have raised today make nuclear non-use ever more pressing.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, before I turn to the main subject of my speech, I must say how surprised I was that the noble Lord, Lord Myners, chose to mock the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill. Coming as he does from Cornwall, I would have thought that he would be on the side of the small producers who, in the past, have often had such a raw deal. I am very surprised that he did not welcome that. I warmly welcome it as it is long overdue.

The main subject of my speech is the environment. Today we are meant to concentrate equally on the environment and the other subjects but the environment is having a raw deal this afternoon as regards the time devoted to it. Today is also the centenary of the founding of what we now know as the wildlife trusts. They were founded in May 1912 by Charles Rothschild, who held a meeting to discuss his radical idea about saving places for nature. That meeting led to the formation of the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves, which would become the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts and signalled the beginning of UK nature conservation as we know it. There are now 47 wildlife trusts covering the whole of the UK, the Isle of Man and Alderney. Through thick and thin—hard times, recessions and good times—they command tremendous public support.

The wildlife trusts do an amazing job: raising public awareness about wildlife, getting local communities involved and campaigning on local and national issues. They collect scientific evidence and their records of wildlife declines and increases are invaluable. They promote wildlife-friendly methods of farming and land management. I congratulate them on their centenary.

At both a macro and micro level, the environment is critical to the economy. As Nick Clegg said in his speech on 11 April this year, the environment contributes to our economy in a range of ways, many of which we do not always appreciate. He went on to say that lean times can be green times. His comments followed the Government’s review of EU habitats regulations. The review came to the welcome and correct conclusion that habitats regulations are not a burden on development.

It is not just economic contributions that are important. Many people feel uplifted by seeing a cloud of peacock butterflies on a buddleia bush or watching a heron fish, which we can do in central London—and many of us have. There is something equally special about the experience of hearing a lark’s song miles from anywhere after a stiff climb up a mountain, or seeing a herd of red deer grazing. In every case, one species does not stand alone; it is part of an ecosystem, with some at the top of the food chain such as buzzards or stoats—an animal close to your Lordships’ hearts—or moles, which of course are at the top of the in-soil food chain. Instead of swearing at the molehill in the lawn, one should welcome it as a sign of a richly biodiverse soil.

I welcome especially our Government’s initiatives, including the natural capital initiative, in which a leading UK forum will bring together scientists, policy-makers, business, industry and others to discuss how the ecosystem approach might be implemented in practice. Defra has just launched the Ecosystems Knowledge Network, which is a resource for anyone wanting to share knowledge or learn about the practical benefits of the ecosystems approach. These are very important developments towards understanding why it is important not just to save individual species but to join up the networks so that every species can be part of the chain.

In June, we will have the Rio+20 conference. There are no major treaties this time—it will be more about ways of working and sharing knowledge. The ecosystem will be recognised as the foundation of life. There will be moves to monetarise natural capital and realise its value. However, as invaluable and irreplaceable as ecosystems are, they need to be valued for themselves as well. I wish Rio+20 much good luck and look forward to hearing from the Government what our contribution will be to a successful conference.