Agriculture Bill

Debate between Earl of Devon and Lord Curry of Kirkharle

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

[The Earl of Devon (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am concerned that the mistreatment of and disrespect for farmers under the Bill is continuing. I speak to Amendment 36 and to support Amendment 37 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and Amendment 41.

The 2022 harvest season has begun. Crops are being sown right now that are due to be harvested next year, and farmers just do not know what rules they will be harvested under. With respect to Amendment 29, the Government accepted that expert advice and guidance is a priority for these farmers, but there is nothing to advise and guide them on—they simply do not know what the rules are going to be. Similarly, in proposing Amendment 35, the Government have accepted that the minimum reasonable period is 12 months, but they are not giving the farmer those 12 months.

There were very reasonable objections raised, I think by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, that we do not want to delay the environmental achievements due to be delivered by ELMS. I agree; we do not want undue delay. However, it would be an environmental disaster to proceed with the transition period that will be stillborn at birth.

No farmers are going to adopt this if they do not know what it is or how it is going to work, so it will be useless from the outset. We need to take time; the Government need to get responses to their tests and trials and work out what they are going to do. Rushing this legislation and rushing the transition period into being is not going to deliver any benefit to farmers, the environment or the public.

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB) [V]]

My Lords, my interests are as recorded in the register. I fully support and I am very happy to attach my name to Amendment 37 in the name of my noble friend Lord Carrington. I am delighted to support him in this debate.

I am very concerned indeed about the gap in support as the current basic payment scheme is unwound and access to the new ELM scheme becomes available as planned in 2024. As I chat to farming friends, it is very clear that they remain completely in the dark and unclear on what lies ahead, as has been stated many times in this debate—and just now by the noble Earl, Lord Devon.

Smooth transition should be a priority to ensure that we unlock the huge benefits that the new policy is capable of delivering. Farmers have been supported by the CAP, with all its weaknesses, for decades, and are familiar with the systems involved, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, just mentioned. As we know, many, particularly those in livestock areas in the uplands, are currently very dependent on that support. To move at pace from where we are today to a satisfactory destination at the end of the transitional period when we have no information on the steps that are being considered by government is not only very worrying to farmers but a massive risk. Time is not on our side, as I stated in Committee. ELMS pilots are just under way and meaningful conclusions will take a couple of years or more to interpret. There will be only three years from the time the Bill becomes law to draw conclusions from the pilots and then launch the ELM scheme to the entire farming sector. There is at present no way that farmers can prepare for this change, because no information is available.

This change in policy is a unique opportunity to facilitate restructuring of the agricultural sector, but it cannot be rushed. It is reassuring that the Minister recognises that there is a gap and in an earlier debate outlined the various options that will be available to farmers from next year: new stewardship schemes, productivity grants, et cetera, to help with the transition. However, if he will forgive me, it all sounds rather last minute, a bit hasty, and an attempt to plug the gap to be seen to be doing something. I do not want to appear cynical but I am concerned that this will suck out capacity from the department and its agencies—capacity that should be devoted to developing the ELM scheme and assisting farmers with transition. It is regrettable that so far we have information only on the deduction from the BPS for the first year of transition. This amendment is important in that it is designed to smooth the process; to limit the dismantling of support from the BPS to a reduction in total of 25% until the ELM scheme is available is a sensible approach.

I restate what I said in Committee—that I

“genuinely believe that we can lead the world in delivering a wide range of crucial outcomes from the management of the countryside, provided that the policy is well designed and land managers”

have access to the advice recommended in an earlier debate and time to adapt. It would

“be a disaster if such an important change in policy was rushed through and we failed to engage appropriately”.—[Official Report, 21/7/20; col. 2070.]

In response to the eloquent comments of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, I say that the outcomes that he and we all desire will best be delivered through a well- managed transitional process. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure the House that the department will adopt the timetable proposed in this amendment.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Earl of Devon and Lord Curry of Kirkharle

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Devon (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 143, to which I have put my name. I too have very real concerns that Defra will simply not be ready for the transition period to begin in 2021 and that farming will suffer as a result. To provide the Government and farmers with sufficient time to prepare for transition, we should start it in 2022, rather than 2021. This way, we can ameliorate the transition chasm that I have discussed before. The House has spent four long days in Committee, debating many variations of ELMS, and has made its way through Clauses 1 and 2 of the 54-clause Bill. We hope to rush through the bulk of this legislation in another two days, under huge time pressure. Scrutiny cannot be sufficient in these circumstances and major aspects of this crucial legislation will be barely considered.

The Government have suggested that time is of the essence and that this Bill simply has to be passed so that the transition period can begin on 1 January 2021. They say that farmers will not be able to be paid if it does not. This is simply not true. It was easy for Parliament to extend direct payments to farmers for 2020; we can simply repeat that process. Given that the Government have confirmed that they will maintain the level of agricultural funding until the end of this Parliament, this will have no negative impact on the Treasury or on budgets. What it will do is permit Defra to prepare for ELMS in an orderly manner.

Despite the best efforts of its overstretched and underfunded staff, Defra is transparently far behind where it needs to be. The EFRA Committee took evidence on 16 June 2020 from Defra’s two leads: Tamara Finkelstein, its Permanent Secretary, and David Kennedy, the director-general of food, farming and biosecurity. I recommend the transcript of their evidence to all noble Lords, as it provides a valuable insight into its much-delayed progress. They admit to considerable delays in the tests and trials programme caused first by Brexit, which took many staff for emergency no-deal planning, and then by coronavirus, which meant that many key tests and trial programmes have not begun.

Defra is triaging. For example, it has confirmed that it has abandoned plans to build a new computer system to administer ELMS. Instead, it will be delivered using the current SITI Agri system, which is used by the RPA to administer BPS. Reading between the lines, it appears that tier 1 of ELMS is effectively going to be little more than BPS plus greening obligations by a new name, administered by the same team, using the exact same technology. I would appreciate the Minister’s confirmation of this.

On Thursday, the Minister helpfully confirmed that Defra would publish a multiannual financial assistance plan this autumn. Given the incredible delays disclosed by Defra, what details is it really able to provide? Will the Minister confirm whether, but for Brexit meaning Brexit, Defra would prefer to agree to this amendment and give itself longer to prepare for the transition?

I warmly support the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, which also relate to the transition chasm. However, I cannot support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. ELMS is optional—the quicker the transition, the less uptake there will be and the worse the outcome for our environment.

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB) [V]]

My Lords, my interests are as recorded in the register. I fully support Amendment 144, in the name of my noble friend Lord Carrington, to which I was happy to attach my name. I am very concerned about the gap in support as the current basic payment scheme is unwound and access to the new ELM scheme becomes available, as planned, in 2024. As I said at Second Reading, this is fraught with risk. The delays caused by indecision on Brexit and then the impact of coronavirus mean that the ELMS pilots are just under way. Meaningful conclusions will take a couple of years or more to interpret. The design of the schemes, and the value of public goods that we hope will be delivered by this brave new model for supporting the management of the countryside, must be promoted to farmers and land managers with confidence. We need the evidence from the pilots and there is no slack in the timetable to experiment or for systems to fail and be rerun, which is why many of us are deeply concerned about the Government’s reluctance to change the current seven-year transition plan. At Second Reading, I suggested that the Government should be willing to extend the period to eight years.

Under the current plans, there will only be three years by the time the Bill becomes law to draw conclusions from the pilots and then launch the ELM scheme to the entire farming sector. Tens of thousands of family farmers are not prepared for the scale of the change that the Bill will introduce. It is the most fundamental change in support, and the greatest cultural change, that any farmer in Britain today has ever faced. At present, there is no way farmers can prepare for this change because, for obvious reasons, there is no information available on the basis of which they can begin to consider their future plans and make decisions.

This change in policy is a unique opportunity to facilitate restructuring of the sector, but this cannot be rushed. Every farmer needs to consider the impact of the change on their individual business. As a result of the scale of this challenge, it is inevitable that there will be a capacity problem. The quantum of qualified consultants who are trusted and able to provide 30,000 or 40,000 farmers with informed advice in good time to make considered decisions will be an enormous challenge. To ensure that the potential benefits which the ELM scheme can deliver, and which will hopefully be realised, will require careful consideration by each farmer and land manager.



If ELMS is launched in 2024 as planned, there will be a deluge of applications and the capacity of the RPA and Natural England to cope with the volume will be stretched to the limit. The possibility of every farmer who wishes to participate in the ELM scheme being able to do so in 2024 is unrealistic. For all these reasons, the Government need to think very carefully about the timetable. This amendment is designed to help smooth the impact. Limiting the dismantling of support from the BPS to a total reduction of 25% until the ELM scheme is available is a sensible approach.

I restate what I said at Second Reading: I reassure the Minister that I am enthusiastic about this bold change in policy and genuinely believe that we can lead the world in delivering a wide range of crucial outcomes from the management of the countryside, provided that the policy is well designed and land managers are appropriately incentivised. It would be a disaster if such an important change in policy was rushed through and we failed to engage appropriately. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure the House that the department will adopt the timetable proposed in this amendment. It would be very much appreciated by farmers and land managers and would ensure a greater chance of achieving the desired outcomes.

Very briefly, I have considerable sympathy with the purpose of Amendment 149 tabled by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. Smaller livestock family farms, both in LFAs and in the lowlands, are the most vulnerable to these changes. They manage some of the most precious landscapes in Britain and are a crucial part of rural communities. The choice of taking a hard-nosed commercial approach, resulting in many being forced out of business, or a more sympathetic view that would require some special care and support to help those farming businesses adjust to change is a no-brainer, otherwise the impact could be disastrous. The Minister is aware that I chair the Prince’s Countryside Fund. We have supported over 1,000 such farmers through the Prince’s Farm Resilience Programme, with considerable success. It is essential that these crucial farming families are given appropriate support to ensure that they can adapt their businesses, not just to survive but to prosper in this brave new world.