Agriculture Bill

Duke of Somerset Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 10th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Duke of Somerset (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my farming interest, as in the register.

There are many substantive issues in this Bill and around ELMS, and I start with standards. The empty shelves which were so apparent at the start of the lockdown should focus our minds, so I welcome the belated acknowledgment of food production as an aim in the Bill, but I ask: what sort of food production? The Minister says that the Government can square the stated promise of not reducing our standards of welfare, stocking densities and environmental concerns with doing trade deals with countries with lower standards. Therefore, if there is to be one standard for imports and another for home-produced food, it is vital that labelling regulations are updated to give transparent and full information to the shopper, who tends to buy primarily on price considerations. Care also needs to be given to how consumers in cafés and restaurants are properly informed of the origins of their foodstuffs.

The Government have been clear that they intend to take advantage of Brexit freedom from EU red tape and will phase out cross-compliance. So again there is a dichotomy between moving away from the stifling rules and regulations that benighted the CAP and the demand for a high-cost regulatory regime to ensure continuation of our high standards. We must avoid even worse red tape than currently strangles our enterprises. The NFU’s suggestion of a farm standards commission to address that seems laudable.

I hope that ELMS will be far-reaching, including embracing, for example, emerging technologies, such as leaf recognition to target individual plants when spraying. The further development of robotic fruit and vegetable picking is vital if the shortage of foreign labour, so exacerbated by our foolish Brexit policy, is to be avoided.

We are seeing a gradual shift in diet in the UK, not just with less meat being consumed but with demand for locally produced food sold in local shops. The coronavirus has encouraged this trend and people are becoming more conscious of their health. In the post-virus world, we must embrace and encourage this localism, breaking the unfair near-monopolies of the big supermarkets, with their aggressive purchasing tactics.

Cleaner water is clearly targeted in the Bill. However, floods continue to ravage settlements every year. We need to slow up floodwater flows and catch the excess higher up in the hills. Rewilding is a topical discussion and one of the best ways of controlling water is by reintroducing bends into our streams, as well as reintroducing beavers. The successful introduction of beavers to the River Otter in Devon points the way back to better river management regimes. Can the Minister confirm that Defra’s intention is to expedite and encourage the licensing of these native animals, which naturally slow water and create rich environments for wildlife, thus regenerating biodiversity?

The Bill mentions productivity in forestry. I believe that we need to encourage more planting of both conifers for commercial wood use and broadleaf trees for landscape and environmental reasons. However, indigenous broadleaves cannot thrive alongside the grey squirrel. Can the Minister kindly indicate the department’s support for the current immuno- contraception research and rollout?

The UK agriculture industry needs consumer buy-in to support the higher cost of our standards. That means getting the general public to understand farming constraints. I would like to see encouragement in ELMS for farm tours and school groups, and the expansion of permitted footpaths to augment our already world-leading rights-of-way network. There is much to welcome in the Bill. Let us expand and use it to the fullest extent.

Queen’s Speech

Duke of Somerset Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Duke of Somerset (CB)]

My Lords, while we appreciate that few of the Bills alluded to in the Queen’s Speech will be brought forward before the next election, they indicate what the Conservative Party might do in the event that it wins a majority. However, it is also clear that, economically, the UK would be far better off under the status quo of membership rather than under any or no deal. Many parts of these Bills would be unnecessary as the provisions of our EU membership enshrine legislation—as, for instance, with the new Environment Bill, where the precautionary principle and the polluter pays principle proposed currently apply to all EU member states.

However, the environment is a hot topic and people want to see cutting-edge policies that will make a real difference. Top of these must be urban air quality. Transport exhausts are a prime target, and not only private road vehicles need to change but also buses and trains, which are so often forgotten—not to mention aviation. Electricity is the favoured medium-term solution, but why are we not leaping straight over to hydrogen power? It has many advantages, the main one being that it is most abundant and pollution free. There are still a few problems to solve, such as transportation of the gas or liquid and its storage. Development and infrastructure costs will be high for both electricity for vehicles and for hydrogen fuel cells, but the latter is surely the silver bullet for our future transportation policies, whereas electricity production is dependent on fossils and will be for some time. The manufacture of storage batteries is extremely polluting. It was, however, good to see that renewables now account for nearly 50% of our generation in some quarters of the year. Have the Government commissioned any research on hydrogen, or are they slavishly following the generally accepted world view on the progression of power sources without questioning it? The £1 billion going to the automotive industry should be spent wisely.

The Government’s time targets for change are not ambitious and rather weak, in my view. I am sure that the motor industry is putting a brake on the speed of change, but policies such as pedestrianisation—Oxford Street comes to mind—and non-fossil fuel vehicles such as taxis and delivery vans going electric, if they go down that route, can be brought in much faster. We now have cleaner hybrid buses on the streets of our cities, but they seem to revert quickly to diesel. Does the Minister have any information on what proportion of their time they operate on electric only? I fear it will not be very high.

And what about trains? Electrification has been pathetically slow. In the West Country, route electrification has only reached as far as Newbury, so the new fleet of Great Western trains has to be hybrid, switching from diesel to overhead pantographs—the inefficiencies of this must be huge. On the railway line I take to Salisbury, South Western Railway operates trains which have a diesel engine under every carriage. The emission of smoke, noise and exhaust fumes that accompany their progress, or worse when they are stationary, is surely no longer acceptable. The line from Salisbury westward is a single track, although one can still see the old rails alongside. A little project, such as dualling this line, illustrates a typical worthy candidate of any cash released from the possible abandonment of HS2 and would greatly improve the reliability of journeys. The Government’s concern for the environment would be well satisfied if this project were scrapped in favour of smaller projects and upgrades throughout the country. The huge environmental cost of driving a new railway through our countryside, SSSIs and people’s houses and businesses has been underrecognised.

On the other hand, I am in favour of building new roads to bypass settlements and plug gaps in A-road dual carriageways. Such a policy would move the pollution away from where people live and avoid the damaging stop-start scenario in towns, where vehicles are at odds with pedestrians.

Another specific example where money will be well spent is at Stonehenge, where the monument—one of the biggest tourist attractions in the West Country—is completely spoilt by the nearby A303, which is often in gridlock. The proposed tunnel has suffered from the vacillating decisions of successive Governments but is now awaiting planning permission. I hope the Transport Secretary will do his best to push this forward.

I turn briefly to agriculture and declare my interest as an arable farmer. A botched Brexit will do serious harm to some sectors, due to adverse tariffs and disadvantageous new trade agreements. Beef and sheep farmers are in the firing line, as are those producing malting barley, where there is currently no market as no exporting ships have been reserved due to the Brexit uncertainty. If farmers struggle or fail, it is the very aims of Defra, such as biodiversity and water and soil quality, that will suffer. The new basis of support—public money for public goods and environmental stewardship—is fine, but the farmers will have to provide the work, and they can only do this while solvent.

It is laudable that the Secretary of State has vowed to maintain and improve food and animal husbandry standards, but it is hard to see how this statement dovetails with the new trade agreements with aggressive and distant countries such as the USA, which operate much looser standards.

Theresa Villiers has also spoken of releasing our farmers from the rigidity and bureaucracy of the CAP. Our civil servants have a reputation for gold-plating EU regulations, so it will be interesting to see how they avoid this course in future.

The Prime Minister recently spoke about increased tree planting in relation to reducing greenhouse gases, which I was pleased to hear, but I wonder on whose land this will happen and with what financial incentive to plant and maintain. Without pre-empting a forthcoming debate, how will this long-term policy happen in the face of an onslaught of tree pests and diseases, often arriving from overseas, that our weak import controls of plants and timber do not sufficiently inhibit? In addition to badger culls, we need proper control of the all-damaging grey squirrel through immunocontraception.

Other noble Lords have talked about broadband, and I hope the Minister will take that forward as well.

Rural Poverty

Duke of Somerset Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

Well, of course I have got an answer to that, my Lords. I have good hearing. Childcare is a hugely important part of the beginning of anyone’s journey, and that applies both to working families and to children. Two of the areas trialled on the childcare provision were in rural counties, to ensure rural proofing. In fact, there are 15,500 more teachers working in state-funded schools in England than there were in 2010. I am sure that all noble Lords agree that that is a very good thing.

[The Duke of Somerset (CB)]

Does the Minister agree that the speedy rollout of truly fast broadband in the countryside, not the phantom speeds bandied about by Openreach, would lead to a much greater supply of jobs and thus an increase in prosperity?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, this morning I had a meeting about rural enterprise with many of the interested parties. A leader of one local enterprise partnership said, “If we can crack connectivity, we will have cracked almost everything”. I entirely agree. This is a challenge in rural communities and for business. We are on track, with 95% of UK homes and businesses scheduled to have access to superfast broadband by the end of this year, and are seeking to increase that to 97% over the next few years. However, the universal service obligation is important as a safety net and we are looking at all sorts of innovative ways of getting to hard-to-reach areas.

Brexit: Agriculture and Farm Animal Welfare (European Union Committee Report)

Duke of Somerset Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Duke of Somerset (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome these two reports to the general series of Brexit debates, and declare my interest as a farmer in receipt of EU basic payments and as a landlord of other farms. The main theme running through both reports is the economic woe that would result from a hard Brexit, where WTO rules would prevail in the absence of trade and customs deals.

By way of background, UK farmers currently export at least 60% of their output to the EU. As the 18th speaker, I make no apologies for repeating some of the points that have already been made because they are very important. Our costs of production are far higher than our future competitors’, be it sheepmeat from New Zealand or beef from Brazil. Thus it would be a terrifying scenario were UK producers to face a likely 50% tariff tax into Europe, plus the customs checks, at the same time as they faced open doors to imports from the rest of the world at low or nil tariffs. A vivid example of this could be sheepmeat, which would look like this: New Zealand lamb imports, with no tariffs applied, arrive at about £2 a kilogram, as against UK lamb costs to the EU of nearly £6 a kilogram when the 50% tariff is applied. This will make no sense.

However, the Government have told us that they intend to maintain the current payments of subsidy to the end of this Parliament. But in terms of medium-term—let alone long-term—planning, which farming and certainly forestry need, this is not very reassuring. The Government talk of negotiating a deal as their preference, together with a changed subsidy basis at home, but daily we see the complexity of this, with the stalling of the talks in Brussels and opposition even to the reform Bill along the Corridor. Just look at the controversy over things such as third-country rules, rules of origin, the division of current quotas, or most favoured nation clauses. These are all challenging hurdles that we have to overcome.

Presumably we would like to see our citizens benefit from Brexit but the cost of food is rising and it is bound to do so. I hope that we will not abandon our animal welfare standards or our quality assurances but these will be extremely difficult to maintain in the face of free imports of beef from the US food lots or dubious chicken practices. One might say that the market will choose but when we buy our sandwiches or visit a food outlet, it will be nearly impossible to know the origin of the meat, especially as current food labelling can easily mislead. We also know that 85% of shoppers make their choice on price.

These standards add to our production costs, and the danger of a race to the bottom is well made in the reports —as is another major problem: our heavy dependence on EU labour. As in many other industries, our vets, our fruit and vegetable pickers and our milkers—as a few examples—are now mostly non-British. How is this to be addressed when we are unable to get the basic agreements as to the rights of our citizens living in Europe and vice versa? The House has frequently highlighted this problem, and it is vital that workers and employers have certainty now as to where they will stand at Brexit.

The question of definition between skilled and unskilled labour and the effect of this on visa approvals is paramount. Just because a worker cannot produce a paper qualification does not mean that he is unskilled. The recent fall in the value of sterling means a 20% reduction in wage values and it is not helping the retention of EU staff, so a recruitment shortage is already apparent. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that an assessment of needs will take priority over simple skill distinctions. I know that I am painting a gloomy picture, but I believe that it is realistic and typical of the disaster that Brexit will be for our country. We have—just—voted to leave, but we did not vote to become poorer.

Defra is planning its next 25-year environmental strategy and would like to shift support further in that direction. That is fine if basic farming can survive and contribute towards desirable projects, such as the maintenance of traditional features, soil and water quality and wildlife—even sheep grazing in marginal uplands. We have been hearing about the value of natural capital. Ecosystems that slow water, biodiversity that encourages raptors and environmental assets such as timber production for housing and carbon capture are excellent, but they all require a healthy rural economy to work.

Will the Government encourage the rollout of GM crops? GM could increase yields by 1 tonne per hectare, which would pay arable farmers for the complete loss of their current subsidy. Without knowing it, we are already eating quite a lot of GM food. However, 60% of UK land use is for grass. Livestock is the sector most reliant on subsidy, at well over 100%, whereas dairy is the least reliant: only 1p to 2p per litre is represented by subsidy. Thus, there will be some big changes to our rural landscape, and there is not much in these two reports to encourage anyone to welcome March 2019.

One possible exception is the chance to simplify and humanise bureaucratic administration and inspection. However, given our tendency to gold-plate EU regulations, I rather doubt it. I am sure the Minister will put a positive spin on the situation. But unless the Prime Minister herself can be shown the pitfalls of hard Brexit, our countryside and industry will be ill served.