Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick and Lord Greaves

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

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to support Amendments 105 and 112, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and Amendment 127, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, to which I am a co-signatory. On the funding issue, it is important that there is rollover of funding, as Amendment 112 indicates, because that provides that level of certainty to the farming community.

It is also important to seek assurances from the Minister that there will be no diminution of funding for farming, agricultural and connected purposes in the new dispensation. For many communities, irrespective of farm type, whether in the lowlands or uplands, farming is the base of their economic activity. I would like the Minister to give us assurances on this matter, and an indication of whether resources or funding for the ongoing issues have been discussed at official and perhaps at ministerial level with the devolved regions.

On the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, I agree that a framework for expenditure and a clear direction of travel have to be written into the Bill, and the budgeted annual expenditure available to achieve each of the strategic priorities, which underpin food production, farming and the principle of public money for public goods, has to be set out. I say to the Minister that if we are to provide security to the farming community and prove that the Bill works, it has to benefit farmers and those directly involved in food production in the supply chain.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, whenever I talk to farmers, read the farming press or otherwise see them in the media, they are worried that they do not know how this will work, and that it will simply result in a cut in their income and will be a danger to the future of their business. I have listened to what has so far been an extraordinary seminar on all this business—it will go on rather longer; I did warn people about that —but we still do not get answers from the Government. Those of us who will again be asked by farmers, “What will happen?”, will have to say that we do not know, but we can tell them what might. It is not satisfactory.

The CAP changed several times. Fifteen years ago, it changed very substantially. It was decoupled—that is always the word used on these occasions—from a production-based subsidy system to the area-based schemes: the single farm payment with cross-compliance, which morphed into the basic payment plus greening, which was a bit different but not a lot. It was a major change that inevitably had a seven-year transition period in this country, which resulted in complete chaos with the payments.

I remember that when I was responsible for Defra issues for our party I asked questions time and again in this Chamber about the fact that the Rural Payments Agency was not able to perform its functions properly. People were not being paid on time and some were not being paid at all. The Government will say that it has settled down substantially now. That is true, but that is because the transition has finished, the changes have taken place and people now know what they are doing.

What will happen now? The answer is that everyone will be plunged into a new transition period and another fundamental change where, the Government say, direct subsidies to farms and farmers will be abolished and people will be paid under the new environmental land management scheme. The Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, said that it will definitely start in 2024. Without wanting to be too cynical, my answer to that is, “Pull the other one.” It might start, but it will not be completed at all. I wonder whether it will even start then.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick and Lord Greaves

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, there has already been some discussion which hinges on the question: what is the Bill about? We start off with a very important clause which lists nine environmental aims, together with one aim concerning

“the health and welfare of livestock”,

which at least is about agriculture. Is this an environmental provision or an agricultural one? Those of us who are very keen on the environmental aspects of the Bill must nevertheless recognise that it is fundamentally about the future of farming in this country, not about the wider issue of the environment. It is unfortunate, as has been hinted at by at least one noble Lord, that the Environment Bill has not come first and we have not legislated on the Government’s new vision for the environment of Britain and then been able to fit farming into it. This is a problem that runs through the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, raised at Second Reading.

However, we have the Bill as it is. I was pleased to add my name to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, on drainage schemes and so on, which are crucial. There is an important thing here which links to the proposals for the three tiers of the environmental management scheme. I think everybody is beginning to understand the importance of managing water on a catchment area basis; otherwise, if you do something upstream which affects something downstream, they are not co-ordinated.

The Government talk about peatlands and tree planting as tier 3 schemes, and it is easy to understand how they might work because of their nature. A catchment area scheme, by its very nature, will involve a very large number of landholdings and land managers. It can succeed only if a large proportion of them take part; otherwise, people may be persuaded to take part if they benefit but refuse if they do not. The whole catchment area must be treated as a unity. If such a scheme exists, will it be a condition on a landholding that is part of that catchment area, for all the other grants that it might want, to take part in the tier 3 scheme—the catchment area scheme? I ask the Minister that question because it is crucial.

I very much support what my noble friend Lord Bruce said about hill farming, and I added my name to his amendment. As someone who lives in the middle of the Pennines, in the north of England, I endorse everything he said. There is a tendency among some people to suggest that in such areas, land managers should be just that and that farming becomes irrelevant—in so far as farming takes place, it is there simply because the sheep are needed to manage the land in the way that people want, and hill farmers should become some special variety of civil servant operating on behalf of the Government, because that is the only way they can make a living. The hill farmers I have known over the years in the Lake District, the Pennines and Wales—and, indeed, in parts of Europe—are not the sort of people who want their lives regulated by officialdom. That is putting it fairly mildly. Will it really work like that?

It seems to me that in the hills, in the less favoured areas—in the Pennines, for example—farmers will continue to exist only if they can continue farming and can make enough of their income, their livelihood, from farming. They will not want to become land managers engaged by some bureaucratic board to manage the landscape in a particular way. There are parts where that will be the answer, but they will be a minority. By and large, if our economies, communities and landscapes in those areas are to survive, they will need to make enough money from what they produce. I see no way in which direct subsidy of the products they produce can be done away with in those areas. In the rest of England, perhaps so, but in those areas it will not happen. As we know, at the moment, people are producing milk for more than the price at which the supermarkets sell it; that is the cost to them. They are able to survive because they get the subsidy.

The only other thing I want to mention briefly is that I have two amendments, Amendments 80 and 81, which are amendments to an amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, who has not yet moved her amendment, so it is a bit awkward. She is talking about big cities; I agree with everything I think she is putting forward, which is that in many urban areas, the rural fringe between the towns and the countryside is a bit of a mess. It is what some of us call the zone of tatty land. All I will say is that that applies to small and medium-sized towns, not just big cities.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendments 1 and 37. I understand what the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, said about Amendment 1: he seeks simply to probe in relation to financial assistance. We need to end the uncertainty felt by farming folk as we come out of the common agricultural policy and enter a new regime of funding. Therefore, there needs to be greater certainty about funding provided to farmers. Perhaps the Minister will provide some elucidation on that.

I support Amendment 37 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. To me, many of the amendments in today’s groups deal specifically with how we manage our land environment and new financial assistance powers which are grounded in Clause 1. Amendment 37 gives an opportunity because it gives the Secretary of State the power to issue payments to those farmers who protect or improve and manage the landscape. It is important that farmers are allowed to manage their own land environment for food and livestock production because, after all, they work that land daily, they know about the soil texture and the production levels that the land they farm is capable of. In so doing, they are then enabled to protect the flora, fauna and wildlife, which are all part of the natural environment.

As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, said, Amendment 37 is about ensuring that that financial assistance recognises and is provided for the protection, improvement or management of landscapes and biodiversity through pasture-fed grazing livestock systems. She referred in particular to upland farming, and I recall that when she was in the other place as chairman of the EFRA Select Committee, of which I was a member, she had a particular passion for the needs of upland farmers. Coming from Northern Ireland and from an area where upland farming is a central part of farming, I fully understand that.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, I believe there needs to be some co-operation between the devolved regions and Westminster, or Defra, on how this funding could be managed, how the less favoured areas classified under the old common agricultural policy, including those upland areas, could be managed and protected, and how farmers using that pasture-led grazing system can eke a subsistence and a living out of it and ensure a good farming life.

Always remember that the world’s soils represent the largest terrestrial carbon reservoir. In the UK, two-thirds of our farmland is pasture. Ruminants can effectively convert this into produce of value to us all. The capacity of pasture to build the fertility and health of the soil and the vital role of grazing animals in that process have been known for a long time. With a growing recognition of the environmental costs, and the cost of concentrate feed around five times that of grazed land, there is a shift to feeding ruminants increasingly on pasture.

Pasture-fed grazing livestock systems show a care for the animals, the environment, the land, the soils and the landscape. They bring value to the land, to the farming industry and to us as consumers. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, said, they produce good-quality food in terms of feed production. Pasture also provides a natural and unstressed environment in which ruminants can express themselves while producing nutrient-dense meat and milk that has measurable health benefits for us all and for the wider consumer market.

I believe this needs to be reflected in the Bill and am very content to support this amendment, which I have signed but is in the principal name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I hope the Minister can provide us with some elucidation on adding that as a purpose for financial assistance and ensuring that the purpose of financial assistance in itself is much more, shall we say, mandatory than simply permissory.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Greaves]

I have just been told that because I was not here at the beginning of this group, I cannot speak. I thought that it was a Committee where you could wander in and out all the time. It is not a desperately important point that I want to make, so I will discuss it afterwards with people.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 106 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. There are two principal points here. The Government want this Agriculture Bill, which is a major Bill and the first in many years, to be about public money for public goods. The second point was raised by the previous speaker, the noble Earl, Lord Devon: who is to receive those funds?

I believe that money should support those actively involved in farming activity. They used to be known as active farmers but, as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, that definition has probably broadened now to the wider issue of agricultural activity. If that is the case, and the Government support it, then we can ensure high standards in environmental works on the farm and in food production. We can ensure high standards of food security and perhaps in so doing, we will be able to ensure, along with good food security, good accessibility to food for all in terms of the food chain.

On reallocated entitlements, applicant farmers must be able to demonstrate that they enjoy the decision-making power, benefits and financial risks attached to the agricultural activity on each parcel of land for which an allocation of entitlements is requested. That is right and proper; it is also ethical and moral.

Furthermore, the Minister referred during the previous group to the ongoing work and discussions between Defra and the devolved Administrations. What actual work has been done on broadening agricultural activity? Who will be eligible for such payments and what grades of activity will be eligible? Land ownership probably varies throughout the devolved Administrations compared with what pertains in England. Coming from the Northern Ireland context—there will possibly be some separate legislation for Northern Ireland—I know that we have a conacre system, which is an ancient Irish system whereby people keep land under conacre for one year. It differs from the tenant farmer situation that exists in Britain. What discussions have taken place on agricultural activity between the Minister, his ministerial colleagues in Defra and ministerial colleagues in the devolved regions?