Food Security

Baroness Rock Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Absolutely; my noble friend makes an important point. We look at overall household food security. In the financial year ending 2022, some 7% of households in the UK were considered to be food insecure. The Family Resources Survey 2022-23 found that the proportion of food-secure households decreased from 92% in 2019-20 to 90% in 2022-23. So this is something we do look at in the round.

[Baroness Rock (Con)]

My Lords, tenant farmers do not own their land but they do produce food. Can the Minister tell me what conversations she has had with her colleague the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government on solar planning applications that have been called in that relate specifically to solar applications on tenanted land where the landlord is looking to evict the tenant farmer?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Regarding the solar panels, we have discussed this with Defra, DESNZ and the Ministry for Housing, which the noble Baroness asked about, because it is important, again, that we get this policy right as we develop our policy on housing and on energy. Clearly, this will be part of the land use framework. Regarding tenants, I am sure that the noble Baroness is aware that we have committed to appoint England’s first commissioner for the tenant farming sector to promote the standards outlined in the agricultural landlord and tenant code of practice. We hope that the commissioner will play an important role in this area.

Budget: Implications for Farming Communities

Baroness Rock Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Rock (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

We will hear from the DUP Benches now.

Environment and Climate Change Committee Report: An Extraordinary Challenge: Restoring 30 per cent of our Land and Sea by 2030

Baroness Rock Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Rock (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I declare my interests, as set out in the register, as a trustee of the Royal Countryside Fund and a director of a tenanted farming business. I was chair of the Rock review, commissioned by the Government, which made recommendations to deliver a more resilient agricultural tenanted sector in three main areas: first, to deliver sustainable food production; secondly, to meet the challenges of climate change; and thirdly, to deliver the improvement and enhancement of biodiversity.

I am also a non-executive director at Defra. However, I am deeply disappointed and, frankly, bewildered that the Secretary of State has decided to terminate my role at the end of this month, despite my only having been appointed four months ago and despite my willingness to continue to serve. In opposition, Labour was a vocal advocate of the tenant farmers and of the Rock review. It sends a worrying message to our vital tenant-farming community that my sector expertise is not recognised by Steve Reed and his ministerial team as being a useful asset. However, I remain resolute in my absolute commitment to our tenant farmers, and I promise to continue to champion them and ensure that they have a fair deal from this Government.

I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and her esteemed committee members on this excellent inquiry into the very ambitious target to protect 30% of land and sea, halt nature decline and protect and improve biodiversity by 2030. I am pleased that the new Government support the commitment that they inherited from their predecessor.

Today, as my noble friend Lord Caithness has mentioned, is Back British Farming Day. In recognition of this important day, I shall focus my remarks on what the report means for our agricultural sector and how our farmers can contribute to the 30 by 30 ambition while ensuring that our nation’s food security, as recognised by this Government, remains a priority.

So what role is there for farming? The government response to the report has rightly recognised the need to work in partnership with farmers as custodians of the countryside, in order to ensure that we balance farming and food production with nature recovery. The response also welcomed the committee’s recognition of the role of the environmental land management schemes to contribute towards 30 by 30, where that works effectively for farmers and farm businesses. However, only parts of some of those schemes will count towards the target, and exactly which schemes has yet to be determined. Furthermore, the committee reported that it had received considerable evidence regarding the challenges of accessing environmental land management schemes in protected areas.

The committee mentions the Farming in Protected Landscapes programme, which delivers improvements for nature in line with local priorities. However, that funding comes to an end in March 2025. Are this Government planning on extending the programme?

We must make sure that tenanted farms are included in achieving long-term nature conservation. That means we need longer tenancy agreements, as recommended in the Rock review. That is important, because length of tenure will allow a tenant farmer to make a more meaningful and effective environmental contribution. It was therefore extremely disappointing to note that tenant farmers are not mentioned at all in the report. That is a glaring omission, given their importance in managing, wholly or partly, 64% of total farmable land in England, including protected sites. Many of their landlords are institutions such as the National Trust, the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Cornwall and, as the right reverend Prelate mentioned, the Church Commissioners. I am extremely grateful to him for bringing up the importance of the Church Commissioners’ tenant farmers, many of whom I have met.

Most landowners have clear environmental goals, but those will not be delivered without those vital tenant farmers who actually manage the land. I therefore ask the Minister to confirm the Prime Minister’s commitment to quickly implement a fair deal for tenant farmers, building on the work of the Rock review.

This Government have announced a new deal for farmers that will include optimising environmental land management schemes to produce the right outcome for all farmers, particularly small, grassland, upland and tenanted farms, while delivering food security and nature recovery in a just and equitable way. They have also announced a rapid review of the environmental improvement plan to be completed by the end of this year. That is to be commended, but I want to inject a note of caution. The National Audit Office expresses concern that the removal of the basic payment and the introduction of the sustainable farming incentive, which is part of ELMS, could see 40% of farms close unless they are able to implement productivity improvements—40% of farmers who could lose their livelihoods. There is concern that 30 by 30 could become yet another danger to farming, alongside all the other targets for housebuilding, tree planting, energy production, accessible nature areas and other infrastructure.

I confine my final remarks to solar energy. The Tenant Farmers Association has told me that it is seeing an increasing number of proposals coming forward for solar farms, many of which are impacting tenanted farmland. Some of these are small-scale and others will be considered as nationally significant infrastructure projects and will end up on the desk of the Secretary of State for final decision. As part of the planning process on land which is subject to an agricultural tenancy, consideration must be given to the impact of the development on the personal circumstances of the tenant farmer where they are not party to the development. Where it is considered that the negative impact will be significant and the tenant farmer’s livelihood is at risk, there would be sufficient evidence to turn down an application for development.

However, a recent decision of the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero has been a cause of concern. His decision to give consent to a 2,500-acre solar farm being developed on the Cambridgeshire-Suffolk border has sent shock waves through the local community and further afield. The fact that he made his decision against the advice of the Planning Inspectorate is doubly concerning. Contrast that with a more recent decision, albeit on a smaller scale, by Broadland District Council in South Norfolk, which rejected an application for a solar farm on 90 acres of land in part because of the impact on the tenant farmer, who would have lost a significant area of their farming land.

In defence of his decision, the Secretary of State said that he had to make

“tough decisions with ambition and urgency”

as part of a plan to make

“the UK a clean energy superpower”.

However, surely the concerns of local communities and the impact on the viability of a tenant farmer’s business are also relevant when looking at what projects should be considered for approval. What safeguards do tenant farmers have if the Secretary of State simply decides to override those considerations? Yes, a tenant farmer could bring a judicial review against the Secretary of State, but I confess that I have not met a single tenant farmer with deep enough pockets to do that.

Here, it is critical that we go back to the commitment made by the Prime Minister, when he was leader of the Opposition, when he addressed the NFU conference in February 2023:

“Tenant farmers need a fair deal. They need to know their futures are secure ... I want to see more solar farms across the countryside … But we can’t do it by taking advantage of tenant farmers, farmers producing good British food on carefully maintained, fertile land. They can’t plan properly if the soil beneath their feet isn’t secure. It’s a huge barrier to planning sustainable food production, so we’ve got to give them a fair deal, and we’ve got to use our land well”.


The drive towards net zero cannot be the only consideration when deliberating over solar farms. Food security, local community impact, landscape impact, heritage impact and the impact on tenant farmers, who of course do not own the land they farm, all have to be taken into consideration.

Let me put it as simply as I possibly can. Tenant farmers are being evicted right now from their best and most versatile farming land by landlords in favour of solar panels. While I am certainly in favour of solar energy as we seek to rapidly decarbonise energy generation, it cannot and must not come at the cost of the livelihoods of tenant farmers.

I conclude by offering a simple solution to the Minister. We could start with ensuring that the case law, which provides the vital protections to tenant farmers, is fully referenced in the redrafted National Planning Policy Framework, which is currently under consultation. I ask that the Minister brings this to the urgent attention of the Secretaries of State for both Defra and DESNZ.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

I just remind noble Lords of the advisory time limit in the debate today.

Land Use in England Committee Report

Baroness Rock Excerpts

Tuesday 25th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rock (Con)]

My Lords, I too pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Carlisle for his valuable contributions to this House. I declare my interests as a tenant farmer and as chair of the Tenancy Working Group and the Rock Review. I pay particular tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and the members of the Select Committee for producing such a thorough and extremely important report.

The committee heard that a significant barrier to achieving high take-up of ELMS is uncertainty around the schemes and how they will work in practice. This includes provision of access to those schemes for tenant farmers. Your Lordships have heard me say many times in this House that 64% of England has a tenant farmer as a custodian of the land. It was encouraging to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, talk about land managers as opposed to landowners.

Defra could have a quick win in this area. It could ensure that the design of its Countryside Stewardship Plus scheme, which is due to be rolled out over the coming months, takes on board the measures already employed within the Sustainable Farming Incentive to ensure that tenant farmers are not excluded from participation. This would include not routinely requiring landlords’ consent, providing flexibility on scheme length and avoiding the imposition of penalties where land is lost to tenant farmers. Will the Minister confirm that Countryside Stewardship Plus will be as tenant friendly as SFI?

The Government’s stated policy is that they want to ensure that we maintain the area of land within the let sector of agriculture to help new entrants, promote resilience within the tenanted sector and enhance productivity. It will therefore be key to ensure that there are important safeguards to stop land leaving the sector inappropriately for things such as field-scale solar schemes, rewilding or nutrient neutrality. The committee’s report showed that insufficient provisions are in place to protect tenant farmers from having land taken out of tenancy by landowners looking to turn their land over to solar farms, and the committee heard opposing views about the extent to which solar farms offer the potential for genuinely multifunctional uses. The Rock Review raised that there are ever-increasing examples of land being taken away from a tenant farmer by a landowner for large-scale solar schemes. Can the Minister say what the Government’s position is when the best, most versatile and productive farmland is taken away from a tenant farmer through no fault of their own and often with no recourse?

On livestock farming, we need a better evidence base for assessing the contribution to carbon emissions. Our grasslands maintain a really important store of carbon that is maintained on behalf of the nation by our livestock farmers, who are often vilified in the climate change debate. Rather than replacing meat and dairy in our diets, we should encourage the food chain to access more of its meat and dairy products from sustainable sources domestically rather than from other parts of the globe with a poorer carbon story.

We also need to review the way in which we use designations. The recent designation of the West Penwith Moors and Downs SSSI is a case in point. Drawing a regulatory line on the map will not improve the capacity of landowners, tenants and public bodies to deal with any of the environmental issues identified as being of concern. Better ways of producing collegiate solutions need to be found. Natural England needs to be more of a facilitator than a regulator in that context. The situation in Dartmoor is another case in point. Everybody agrees that many of the SSSIs there are in poor condition, but that is after having followed the mantra of stock reduction followed by Natural England and its predecessor bodies for 25 years. If it has not worked over the past quarter of a century, why is more of the same going to work now? I therefore welcome the review to be carried out by David Fursdon and hope that a more practical, collegiate outcome can be achieved.

To deliver productivity and environmental outcomes from our land, tenant farmers need greater security of tenure over tenanted land. The recent CAAV land occupation survey, which came out last month, records that the average length of term on new farmed tenancies is only 3.66 years. Eighty-five per cent of all new farm business tenancies are let for five years or less. How can a tenant farmer contribute effectively to our nation’s food security and environmental ambitions when they have so little security themselves for the future use of their tenanted land?

I welcomed the Treasury’s consultation as part of the Spring Budget to look at restricting agricultural property relief to those landlords letting for the longest terms: eight years or more, as recommended by the Rock review. I now encourage the Treasury to set out a road map for implementing this change to press forward with more secure tenancies.

As the committee has already said, we have challenging and often conflicting demands on our land. Any approach to a land use framework must be flexible to meet the needs of housing, agriculture, food security and the environment.

UK Food Shortages

Baroness Rock Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rock (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my farming interests as set out in the register and that I was chair of the Tenancy Working Group. Recommendation 11 of the Rock Review is that

“Defra should define food security as a public good alongside other environmental objectives such as clean air, clean water, lower carbon emissions, and improving biodiversity.”


With this in mind, British farmers, including tenant farmers, play a vital role in delivering the Government’s food strategy. Can my noble friend confirm that helping farmers to increase productivity will increase the level of food security in the UK?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

It certainly will, and I pay tribute to the work of my noble friend. I entirely agree with what she says in that report in terms of food security. I also agree with what Minette Batters said at the NFU conference:

“Food security is not the same as self-sufficiency – we will always rely on imports to some degree, and it is sensible to ensure diversity of supply. But food security also means ensuring our food is safe to eat, that it can be distributed efficiently, and that it remains affordable.”


Those are the three key pillars of responsibility of any meaningful Government, and to achieve that we absolutely must have a diversity of producers as well—some will be owner-occupiers, some will be tenants, some will be in different forms of tenure and in share and partner farming arrangements, particularly in the horticultural sector—to ensure that we are producing food that is eaten as near to where it is produced as possible.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Baroness Rock Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rock (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a tenant farmer and as chairman of the Rock review into England’s agricultural tenancies.

The Government’s procedural amendments will increase parliamentary oversight of the design and future development of the animal welfare provisions. The Government recognise that there is a need to safeguard animal welfare, and that is why we need a step-by-step approach by bringing legislation into effect for precision-bred plants first and then for animals. Research in farmed animals is already leading to the development of animals that have increased resistance to some devastating diseases that, as farmers, we all see, and it thereby enhances the health and welfare of animals.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the government amendments that move the regulations to the affirmative procedure; they are extremely welcome.

I thank my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch for her thorough introduction to her Amendments 19 to 21. I am sure noble Lords will remember that in Committee I tabled a number of amendments relating to the welfare advisory body, so we are very pleased to see my noble friend Lady Jones tabling similar amendments today. I spoke at length on this issue in Committee, my noble friend has introduced her concerns and we have heard from across the House, so I shall be brief.

Amendment 19 makes it clear that, in addition to considering information submitted by the notifier, the welfare advisory body should satisfy itself that the notifier has a record of acting in a manner that is consistent with research and animal welfare requirements across other Acts of Parliament. That really should be part of the body’s role. We do not want any confusion or different decision-making across different bodies.

I may have this recollection wrong, but I thought that in an earlier meeting a flow chart was mentioned showing how different animal welfare bodies, in Defra and the Home Office, would interact. I had been hoping to receive a copy of that to get some clarification about precedence and how this was all going to work together. It may have gone into my spam folder and I may have missed it, but if the Minister could check on that, that would be very helpful.

Currently, the Bill states that the welfare advisory body has to determine whether in the animal welfare declaration the notifier has paid regard to the risks to an animal. One of my concerns has always been that it is the notifier who is driving the process and is in the driving seat, rather than the welfare advisory body, which is why we were all very concerned about more checks and balances. We know the Bill says that the notifier has to take reasonable steps to assess those risks, but we do not believe that is a strong enough protection for animals in the Bill.

My noble friend’s amendment would mean that the welfare advisory body had to assess the impact on animals where a precision-bred trait was developed, with the aim, as she said, of achieving fast growth, high yields or other increases in productivity. As we have heard, we have seen that too often in traditional breeding methods, so we need to bring in these protections. We have heard many examples of traditional selective breeding producing animals that were highly efficient but this was often at the expense of animal welfare, and we need to ensure that that is not an unfortunate consequence of the Bill. The RSPCA and Compassion in World Farming have raised serious concerns about the lack of safeguards in the Bill to prevent that happening. In addition, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics has drawn our attention to the fact that many of the effects of selective breeding have been unintended.

We agree with our noble friend that it is reasonable that welfare impacts should be assessed here. Without the amendment, it is not clear exactly how that would be part of that process with the advisory body, particularly in relation to other bodies that already exist. So we strongly support my noble friend and believe that her amendments should be in the Bill.

Future Farming Programme: Small Farms

Baroness Rock Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

There is a threshold for access to the scheme, but it is designed to ensure that we are reaching as many small farmers as possible. As I said earlier, many do not receive any support, particularly in sectors such as the poultry and pig sectors. This is an opportunity for many of them to get access to government money that would not otherwise be available under area payment schemes.

[Baroness Rock (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a director of a tenant farm and a trustee of the Prince’s Countryside Fund, whose aim is to enable family farms to thrive. An increasing amount of future farm income will come from the various ELM schemes. However, areas such as biodiversity offsetting and tree planting do not fall within the definition of agriculture. Over a third of farmers in the UK are tenants, and virtually every tenant farmer in the UK will have a tenancy clause that requires them to use land exclusively for agriculture. If these tenants enter these environmental schemes, they may be in breach of their tenancy, and there would be a huge risk of an incontestable notice to quit from their landlord. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that tenant farmers, particularly those on short-term or restrictive tenancies, will not be constrained by landlords from entering new environmental schemes?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. We are working really hard to resolve some issues that predate the changes that we are making. Countryside Stewardship, for example, has had this difficulty with tree planting and possible wetland creation. We want to make sure that we are getting the money to the active occupiers of the land. We are working with the Tenant Farmers Association where we believe that there may still be issues relating to some aspects of the agreements. We are very keen to keep my noble friend and other Members of the House informed of those discussions.

Rural Landlords and Land Letting: Reform

Baroness Rock Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Baroness Rock]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to their discussions with the Tenancy Reform Industry Group, what plans they have to reform (1) legislation, and (2) taxation, related to rural landlords and the letting of land.

[Baroness Rock (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register as a director of Wrackleford Farms, a tenanted farming business. I thank all noble Lords taking part in this important debate today, and greatly look forward to their contributions. I also thank my noble friend the Minister, who so recently took the then Agriculture Bill through this House. I was most encouraged by his supportive comments on the vital importance of agricultural tenants.

The tenanted sector of agriculture brings together those with assets—landowners—and those with entrepreneurial flair—tenants—to create sustainable and profitable businesses while providing landowners with a return through the payment of rent. The landlord and tenant system also provides liquidity to the most fixed factor of production in agriculture: land. Farm businesses looking to expand or contract can use the flexibility of the landlord and tenant system to meet those objectives. Also, agricultural tenancies remain the only viable route for many aspiring farmers to enter the sector.

It is disappointing that this important sector is adversely affected by short-term thinking. The introduction of the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995 represented a major deregulation of the legislative framework within which agricultural tenancies operate. A key change was to lengths of term. Prior to 1995, new tenancies could be let only for the lifetime of the tenant, whereas under the new legislation there was no minimum term. A major problem before 1995 was that landlords were reluctant to let farms, knowing that they would be let for a generation. As a result, the size of the tenanted sector was in decline. However, this legislation has allowed the pendulum to swing too far in the opposite direction and now the average length of term on new tenancies is, remarkably, under four years. This means that farm tenants cannot plan for the long term, either in relation to their agricultural activities or in their desire to take part in diversification and new agri-environment schemes such as the proposed ELM schemes.

The Tenant Farmers Association has long asserted that the best way to address this is through amendments to the taxation environment within which landlords make decisions about land use. To do this, it has proposed the following sensible changes to taxation: first, restricting the generous 100% relief from inheritance tax, currently available to all landlords regardless of the length of time they are prepared to let land, only to those prepared to let land for 10 years or more; secondly, restricting those landowners that use share farming, contract farming, share partnerships and grazing licences as thin facades of trading activity to gain tax advantage when in practice they take no risk, have no entrepreneurial input and lack any management control; thirdly, offering landlords who are prepared to let for 10 years or more the ability to declare their income as if it was trading income for taxation purposes; and finally, reforming stamp duty land tax to end the discrimination against longer tenancies. This is an area where there appears to be a consensus between those organisations representing landlords and those representing tenants. It seems odd that government policy is to encourage longer farm business tenancies on the one hand and then to penalise those long-term tenancies through the way that they are taxed through SDLT. I seek an assurance from the Government that this issue is reviewed. On taxation, while I appreciate that the Minister does not speak for Her Majesty’s Treasury, it would be instructive to hear whether his department supports these measures and whether he will discuss these matters with his Treasury colleagues.

I thank the Government for bringing into effect certain agricultural tenancy reforms through Schedule 3 to the Agriculture Act 2020. These changes followed a Defra consultation which covered a very much wider agenda of issues than were introduced. That consultation was a distillation of yet wider changes proposed by the Tenancy Reform Industry Group, TRIG, which provided very detailed reports covering AHA tenancies, 1995 tenancies, taxation, county council smallholdings and issues around new entrants and retirement.

In its briefing for this debate, the Country Land and Business Association states that

“tenancy reform must be developed through consensus within TRIG.”

I consider this to be too narrow, but it does give this Government the green light to bring forward a Bill encompassing the full array of changes which TRIG proposed in its reports to Defra in 2017. However, the Government must not find themselves completely unable to make progress on wider areas of tenancy reform when a consensus cannot be found within TRIG due to the competing interests represented within it. This group should of course be a place to which the Government go for expert advice, but it should not decide policy. It is for the Government to decide how best to promote resilience and sustainability within the tenanted sector. During the debates on the various stages of the then Agriculture Bill in your Lordships’ House, we heard from many noble Lords from all quarters that we needed a specific piece of legislation for agricultural tenancies. When might we see a government Bill which picks up the issues identified by TRIG and the department’s own consultation?

One of the welcome changes in the Agriculture Act was the expansion of the franchise of organisations that can be used for the appointment of arbitrators for dispute resolution beyond RICS. Now we have the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers and the Agricultural Law Association. This is good news, as RICS had too much of a monopoly in this area, and its own governance issues. However, we must go much further on reforms to arbitration.

Here, I have to admit to first-hand experience of what an archaic process arbitration can be. My family has recently had to go through a difficult, lengthy and expensive arbitration process for the review of our farm rent. It is not a process that I would welcome having to repeat, although, sadly, it is the principal mechanism for resolving disputes that cannot otherwise be settled by agreement. Arbitration was intended to be a relatively straightforward and inexpensive process for resolving disputes. I can attest to the fact that it is anything but. As a family, we were disappointed with the way in which our case was handled in a number of ways.

Being able to learn lessons from this process is massively hampered by the fact that arbitration awards are required to be kept confidential between the parties. I contend that they should be publicly available and open to scrutiny, so that arbitrators can be held to account for the way in which they resolve cases. At the moment, there is little precedent or case law in this area. In addition, parties are left with an incredibly short period of time within which to appeal. A period of only 28 days is insufficient, particularly where the appeal has to be mounted in the majority of cases by a tenant farmer who can be daunted by the prospect of having to take matters to court. Overturning bad arbitration decisions is difficult and expensive and I believe that the whole process of dispute resolution needs to be fundamentally reviewed.

The CLA calls for a balance in landlord-tenant relationships and I wholeheartedly endorse this. However, it is patently obvious to any informed observer of the landlord-tenant system in agriculture that it favours the landlord. Short lengths of agreement, restrictive tenancy terms and high rents provide maximum benefit and flexibility to landlords and place additional burdens on existing and prospective tenants. The system needs to be levelled up. With more individuals looking for opportunities to take on tenancies in comparison to those offering land, it is clear that there is a market failure, which the Government need to step in to correct, both by considering sensible changes to legislation and the beneficial taxation environment within which landlords operate. It is obvious that the financial incentives are driving perverse behaviours that are in direct conflict with the good intentions of current legislation.

Agricultural tenancies are crucial to our farming industry, our farmed environment and our farming future. Reforms are vital. A specific agricultural tenancy Bill is essential and I hope that the Minister will respond positively to that call.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Rock Excerpts

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 17th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rock (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a director of Wrackleford Farms Ltd, a tenant farming enterprise. I shall speak to Amendments 81, 82, 83, 85 and 86, which stand in my name. I am grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for these amendments. I shall also speak to Amendments 69 and 89 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, Amendment 84 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and Amendments 87 and 88 in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering.

In speaking to my Amendment 81, I speak also to Amendment 84 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, which will achieve the same outcome for Wales prior to it coming forward with its own legislation, as this amendment envisages for England. This amendment is a straightforward change to require the Government to come forward with the necessary regulations to allow an agricultural tenant to refer to dispute resolution an unreasonable refusal from a landlord following a request made by the tenant to join a scheme developed under the provisions for financial assistance.

While the Government may give an assurance that they will use the power available in this part of the Bill to bring forward the necessary regulations, there is no reason why the Government should not commit to doing so in the Bill. Tenant farmers are rightly concerned about their ability to access new public payments for public good schemes in light of their tenancy agreements and some of the restrictive clauses which they contain. Tenants must be given the assurance that they will be able to enter new schemes without the landlord being able to unreasonably withhold consent. The change which this amendment will make is entirely in line with the Government’s policy and should not cause any issue for them but at the same time it would give a tremendous boost of assurance to tenant farmers who are looking at the possibility of taking part in new schemes as they develop.

Sadly, there are circumstances where landlords refuse consent on an unreasonable basis for their tenants to enter schemes. Although it may be considered prudent for landlords to allow their tenants to remain profitable, it can sometimes be the case that landlords seek to use the leverage involved in having to give their consent to make unreasonable demands of their tenants, including surrendering secure tenancies in favour of insecure farm business tenancies, seeking the surrender of land, buildings or dwellings or merely to make the life of the tenant difficult. Having said that, there are, of course, plenty of examples where relationships between landlords and tenants are very good and where the changes being envisaged by this amendment would not be a risk to those good relationships or undermine what the parties are trying to achieve in those circumstances.

Amendment 82 closes a potential loophole in the provisions of the Bill around gaining the consent of the landlord, which is required to be obtained by the tenant in entering a financial assistance scheme. The Bill contains a relatively narrow set of criteria which need to be in place before the tenant has recourse to potential dispute resolution for an unreasonable refusal of consent to join a financial assistance scheme. The Bill envisages providing the tenant only with the option to object where the tenancy agreement or legislation governing the relationship between the landlord and the tenant restricts the tenant’s ability to participate without the landlord’s consent. However, there may be individual requirements set out within the financial assistance schemes which require tenants to seek the landlord’s consent. It may be because of the nature of specific land use changes envisaged by schemes being considered by tenants. Currently, that situation would not be covered by the provision in the Bill, and the amendment seeks to address that by ensuring that all refusals by a landlord can be referred by the tenant to dispute resolution on the grounds of reasonableness.

The Government may say that they will ensure to address this point in the way in which they design schemes, and I have some sympathy with that, but it would be better to have the provisions in the Bill rather than have to rely on individual schemes having their own appeal mechanism.

Amendment 83 would address specific issues around unreasonable restrictions within tenancy agreements which prevent farm tenants investing in their holdings to carry out activities or improvements which assist with the productivity or sustainability of the holding. This could include using the holding for non-agricultural activities which are in keeping with and complementary to its agricultural uses, which many farms want to do and which adds much-needed financial stability to those holdings.

Many tenants will have agreements which require them to seek their landlord’s consent for the installation of new fixed equipment or to carry out new activities where the requirement for the landlord’s consent is absolute. In these circumstances, there is no recourse for the tenant, who feels aggrieved by a refusal from the landlord. In that it is a point of public policy that farming should become both more productive and more sustainable, it would be an error not to allow tenants the same ability to fulfil those objectives as others. Of course, reasonable landlords will give reasonable consent for activities which improve the productive capacity of the holding and/or its sustainability, but, sadly, there are situations where such consent is not forthcoming. This is mostly because landlords are seeking to extract other concessions from their tenants, as I have set out previously. This amendment does not seek to provide a carte blanche ability for tenants to avoid reasonable clauses within their tenancy agreements, but it would provide the opportunity for them to appeal against an unreasonable refusal from their landlord. Indeed, this suggestion formed part of the recommendations of the Tenancy Reform Industry Group in its report to Defra in October 2017.

Amendments 85 and 86 would enhance the franchise of individuals who are able to apply for succession of tenancy for the limited number of Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 tenancies which continue to have rights of succession. Where those rights of succession apply, a narrow list of close relatives are able to apply to be considered to be eligible to take on succession tenancy. Up to three generations of members of the family can be tenants of the same holding. The current franchise includes husbands, wives, civil partners, sons, daughters, individuals brought up in farm families and treated as children of a marriage or civil partnership, and brothers and sisters of the deceased or retiring tenant. However, crucially, the list of potential successors does not include the grandchild, the nephew or the niece of the deceased or retiring tenant, nor does it include children from a cohabiting partner of the deceased or retiring tenant. The amendment seeks merely to correct for those omissions. This is also an issue that was considered by the Tenancy Reform Industry Group. It is often the case that the most appropriate successor in a family business is not to be found in the immediate generation but in the next, and there is no reason to deny the ability for the tenancy to be passed to those individuals should they also be able to meet the other eligibility criteria.

I strongly support Amendment 87 in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, as it seeks to provide a framework for encouraging longer-term farm business tenancies. As the noble Earl, Lord Devon, raised, the average length of FBTs is under four years. With 90% of all tenancies let for five years or less, this is a crucial issue. I look forward to hearing what the Government plan to do about it and ask that consideration be given also to the taxation environment within which landlords make decisions about farm tenancy letting, as has been proposed by the Tenant Farmers Association.

Amendment 88 in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering is crucial to this legislation. FBT tenants should not be left out of the possibility of objecting to their landlord’s refusal to allow them to enter into a financial assistance scheme. Should my noble friend push this matter to a vote, I would certainly vote in favour of the amendment, as it closes a dangerous loophole for nearly half the tenanted sector of agriculture.

Finally, I turn to Amendments 69 and 89 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I cannot support the removal of the tenancy provisions in the Bill that those amendments would achieve. However, I understand and fully agree with his view that we urgently need a specific Bill covering agricultural tenancies. It could pick up on many of the issues already recommended by the Tenancy Reform Industry Group. I urge my noble friend the Minister to give an assurance that an agricultural tenancies Bill will be brought before this House in the not too distant future.

I know that my noble friend the Minister is very supportive of the tenanted sector and highlights its importance to the whole agricultural industry. I thank him particularly for his empathetic engagement on this. It is therefore right that new legislation, providing security and stability to the tenanted sector, should be brought before the House. Although I am minded to test the will of the House on my amendments, I will listen carefully to what the Minister says before making my final decision.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow my noble friend Lady Rock and thank her for her staunch and eloquent support for Amendments 87 and 88. Perhaps I may briefly address Amendments 69 and 89, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I have great difficulty with them because they would remove from the Bill all provisions relating to agricultural tenancies. That would be a very regrettable move. However, I support Amendment 84 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, which is a mirror image of the amendments standing in my name.

I will address my remarks primarily to Amendments 87 and 88. Clearly, as I say in my explanatory statement, Amendment 87 would seek to

“bring into effect a legislative change proposed in the tenancy reform consultation carried out by DEFRA and the Welsh Government, which has not been covered by the Bill, to encourage landlords to let longer Farm Business Tenancies.”

I would like to draw out some of the comments made by my noble friend Lady Rock in speaking to her amendments as passionately and eloquently as she did. I am minded to press Amendment 88 to a vote, not on my behalf but on behalf of all the agricultural tenants for whom, I know, this is close to their hearts.

I have had cause to raise this issue at previous stages of the Bill and I feel passionately about it. I grew up in a part of the world—Teesdale, in the Pennines in the north of England—where the farm incomes are among the lowest in the land. The farmers there probably survive only because their wives go out not just to help on the farm in all weathers, particularly at lambing time. In normal circumstances, outside Covid, they also go out and try to earn a living to keep the family afloat.

The basis of Amendment 88 is very simple. It is to put the tenants’ agreements under the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995 on exactly the same basis as under the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986. My noble friend Lady Rock referred clearly to the devastating effects of moving from a secure tenancy agreement to an insecure tenancy, which do not bear thinking about in the present climate. Tenant farming is the bedrock of this country; it is almost unique to the English countryside. I remember so clearly from my years as a Member of the European Parliament how we stand out as one of the few areas of Europe with such a well-developed system of tenancies.

What I find so heartbreaking about the current situation is that the two Acts have not yet been brought together. To me, the provisions covering tenants under them should be absolutely as one. This is a highly regrettable situation. To be fair, my noble friend the Minister tried to go to some pains to put my mind at rest in Committee. Yet I find myself tabling the same amendment on Report, and potentially putting it to a vote, because I have not had satisfaction on this point.

I believe I am here as a voice for those people who cannot be represented otherwise than through our good selves in this House. I urge my noble friend to consider any reason why the tenancies under the two Acts cannot be treated in exactly the same way. It would be grossly unfair if any tenants’ possible access to financial assistance could be refused at the whim of a landlord. I accept there are good tenants and bad tenants; there are good landlords and bad landlords. But we have to look at the worst-case scenario.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Rock Excerpts

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

I very much hope that the Minister will be able to accept my first amendment to help to improve the environment and my second to help to preserve our increasingly marginal small hill farms. I may wish to press these amendments to a vote, depending on the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Rock (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a director of Wrackleford Farms Ltd, a tenant farming enterprise. I shall speak to Amendment 42. The amendment, supported by the NFU, would ensure that farmers entitled to payments receive those payments within guaranteed timescales to help ensure certainty of cash flow. I thank my noble friend Lord Caithness for his support.

I said in Committee that any farmer will tell you that cash flow is their number one consideration. As a farmer, it is one thing to know that financial support will be reduced, but quite a different thing to know when that financial support will be received. Regulations relating to the phasing out of BPS therefore need to include clarity on when a farmer will receive payments.

While it is true that the existing payment windows will come over under retained EU legislation, Clause 9 gives the Secretary of State the right to modify the BPS legislation, including potentially by removing the payment window in place at present. We cannot have a situation where no payment window is set.

Furthermore, it is arguably the case that the current payment window under the CAP rules provides little recourse to farmers if the RPA fails to meet its payment obligations. This leaves farmers waiting an unsatisfactory length of time and in great uncertainty as to when payments will be made. The impact of these delayed payments cannot be overestimated. There is the financial impact: greater borrowing costs, lost business opportunities and less attractive prices for farm produce or inputs. But it also has a substantial impact on the well-being of farmers, their families and their relationships with their farm suppliers, which—importantly—filter down through the wider rural economy.

The payment window for direct payments is seven months: 1 December to 30 June of the following calendar year. Current rules state that payments have to be made only to the value of 95.24% of funds by that time. We all know that farming revenue and costs are both volatile; nothing remains the same month to month or year to year. The overwhelming message from farmers is that they need certainty over the timing of payments.

There need to be payment windows—or dates that Defra has to meet—either fixed in schemes or set out in individual agreements. This will allow holders of agri-environmental schemes to plan with great certainty and to manage their cash flow. It is not acceptable to ask farmers to undertake work at their own cost and to comply with associated strict time limits but then provide them with no certainty on payments associated with those works.

The government department BEIS has a prompt-payment policy that requires payments within a certain number of days: 30. I would welcome a similarly prompt-payment policy approach for agricultural schemes with guaranteed timescales. I hope the Minister will provide reassurance on this matter.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, while I thoroughly support the aims of this Bill and the direction in which the Government are taking us, I have to say that I get more and more concerned as we delve into the detail of the Bill and the experts who are farmers—such as the noble Lords, Lord Curry and Lord Carrington, my noble friend Lady Rock and others—expose the concerns that farmers face. It is for that reason that I support many of these amendments.

I tried to put my name to Amendment 36 in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, but there was already a full house of supporters. However, I supported this amendment in Committee and would do so again now. The argument is very compelling that the pilot schemes have only just started and it is going to take a long time for them to report and for the department to go through them, gestate them and work out what the future is. There would be very little time for the farmers to implement the results. Therefore, putting the whole thing back by a year would be a sensible, pragmatic and welcome solution to one of the many problems that the farmers face.

The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, made some very good points when he moved Amendment 37, which also deserves support. On the points made by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, on Amendment 38, I reiterate that you do not have to be an organic farmer to protect the environment. You can farm in a perfectly normal way and bolster it. My main concern is Amendment 42, to which I have put my name and which has just been so well introduced by my noble friend Lady Rock.

The noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, put it very succinctly when he spoke of sucking out the good of the department—I think those were his words. My concern is that as we move to ELMS, inevitably the department will move the good people into the new scheme and the less good people will remain with the old scheme. I hate to categorise the department in that way because all the members of Defra are good, but inevitably the really bright ones will be with the more attractive new scheme, and as the old scheme runs out, there will be an inevitable tendency for it not to receive the same attention that it gets now.

My noble friend Lady Rock was absolutely right to say that the one thing farmers need is certainty. As that support is reduced, so it is imperative that the payments are made promptly and on time. What recourse does a farmer have if he or she is made bankrupt because the Government, using taxpayers’ money, do not pay as they should? The area of financial support is hugely concerning and we must get it right. As the Bill stands, I am not convinced that we have got it right, which is why I support Amendments 36 and 42.