Nitrogen Reduction, Recycling and Reuse (Environment and Climate Change Committee Report)

Earl of Leicester Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2026 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords on the committee for agreeing to undertake this inquiry into nitrogen. Although it was my suggestion, I can take no credit for it; that must go to two scientists who worked with me on the charity SongBird Survival’s scientific sub-committee. Incidentally, I came off its board last year. After one of our meetings, as an afterthought I asked the scientists present whether they might have any suggestions for the committee’s next inquiry. Paul Dolman, professor of conservation ecology at UEA, and Dr Alex Lees of Manchester Metropolitan University exclaimed, almost in unison, “Nitrogen pollution—it’s the big elephant in the room that no one is talking about”.

This is echoed by the opening remarks of the Sustainable Nitrogen Alliance’s briefing: that nitrogen pollution is one of the most urgent but overlooked environmental challenges. A year and a half ago, it too gave an illuminating briefing that our chair and I attended. It is important to note the word “sustainable” in the title of the Sustainable Nitrogen Alliance.

While my initial suggestion for the name of this inquiry was “nitrogen pollution”, it is encouraging that throughout the year-long evidence-gathering process and inquiry, it gradually became clear that we should retitle the inquiry as “Nitrogen: Time to Reduce, Recycle, Reuse”, because it is such an important resource for us humans and our planet. It is essential for life and food production, but mismanagement makes it a major pollutant. I also add my thanks to our committee staff. They are absolute stars, going above and beyond, and continually produce excellent research papers for us.

The subject of nitrogen is so huge that, as a farmer, I shall try to limit my contribution to that subject alone—indeed, to arable farming. By some happy happenstance, I am sitting next to my noble friend Lord Ashcombe, who tells me he is going to talk about slurry, so I shall talk about arable. I shall leave other colleagues to speak more knowledgeably on the many other aspects of nitrogen. Here I should declare my interests as laid out in the register as a large-scale mixed farmer in North Norfolk, albeit following the principles of regenerative agriculture, which aim to regenerate and nurture our greatest asset—our soil.

As our debate in Grand Committee unfolds, it will reveal that farming is one of the greatest culprits with regard to nitrogen pollution. Some £420 million of fertiliser is wasted annually, as our chair said, through inefficient farming practices. The inefficient and unsustainable use of artificial nitrogen, and indeed farmyard manure, leads to large reactive nitrogen losses to the atmosphere and to terrestrial and aquatic systems. Undoubtedly, excess nitrogen use has a deleterious effect on biodiversity. It is this point that the two scientist friends I mentioned at the beginning of my speech were making. The area of nitrogen-sensitive habitats in the UK with exceedance of nutrient nitrogen-critical loads was 57.6% in 2017 and is probably more now. That represents just over 42,000 square kilometres. The area of acid-sensitive habitats of soil and forest ecosystems in the UK that exceed acidity-critical loads was 38.8% or 27,250 square kilometres.

There is a way that farming can also be a provider of one of the solutions. I am afraid that organic farming, although it clearly could be a solution to nitrogen pollution if overwhelmingly adopted, would lead to mass starvation throughout the world. Currently, only 2% of land in the UK is farmed organically.

Although I say I am a farmer, my degree was in history of art. So while I understand my businesses, I do not necessarily comprehend the detail and spend a lot of time asking silly questions of my team—and they are often the best questions. In 2019 I set our farm management team a challenge to see whether they could farm without agricultural chemicals and artificial nitrogen by 2030. It was an 11-year target. There was a sharp intake of breath but they accepted the challenge. Two years later, the broad acres manager came to me to say that he had stopped using insecticides —indeed, we have barely used them since 2021 except on some seed dressings—but he also told me that if we were to stop using nitrogen, our yields would plummet.

To illustrate this, from time to time this team experiments with applying varying degrees of nitrogen to the same crop in the same field. We have had a number of groups from the World Wildlife Fund, Nestlé and Marks & Spencer visit our fields. Some individuals express a preference for organic farming. When we show them our cereal trial plots, that usually convinces them that organic farming is not going to feed the world. The crop with no nitrogen at all looks markedly sparse when compared with those with 60%, 80% or 100% of the recommended fertiliser application. Financially we would not survive—although, granted, we have not built up experience in organic farming.

The farm manager says that he is now using his grey matter much more as he figures out how to make regen farming work, learning from mistakes, having an independent agronomist who is not attached to an ag-chem firm—who of course may want to sell you a little more product—and, when he sees insects in a crop, not immediately reaching for the spray can. He recognises that predator insects such as ladybirds, lacewings, parasitic wasps and hoverflies that attack swarms of aphids do the work for free.

Similarly, our potato enterprise manager took my aspiration to heart and reduced the recommended nitrogen application by 10%. The crop still looked well, and the yield was as expected. He did the same thing the following year, with similar results. In the third year—this is important because it demonstrates how improved technology also plays a part—we bought new precision potato planters that place the nitrogen fertiliser next to the seed. This yielded a further saving of 22% in the amount of nitrogen applied. Over three years he had achieved a compound cost saving of 37%, which goes straight to the bottom line, with no discernible diminution of yield. Importantly for this debate, he had also achieved a saving for the environment, with reduced run-off of unused nitrogen into watercourses or the atmosphere.

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[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I mentioned varying the 60% or 80% rate of nitrogen application but, sadly, it is not as easy as that. No simple rule of thumb can be followed by all farmers since geography, soil type and climatic conditions such as lack of rainfall, excess rainfall, rain at the wrong time, lack of sun and heat, and the timing of nitrogen application all play their part to vary yield. This is where the guesswork comes in.

If we could predict the weather months out, huge amounts of nitrogen could be saved. Generally, in drier conditions a farmer would, could or should apply 70% of what might be recommended, whereas nitrogen use efficiency or NUE—here I glance nervously at my friend, the professor and noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who took issue with this term, despite it being commonly used by farmers and agronomists—is poor in wet weather. At best, a farmer applying less nitrogen in optimum conditions might achieve NUE of 80% to 90% on potatoes, with the rest of the nitrogen, up to 20%, either lost to the atmosphere or leached to rivers. Some would hopefully be retained in the soil. This progressive approach requires thought, but it comes with more risk.

Many farmers are putting too much nitrogen on their crop and therefore are achieving only 50% to 60% NUE, with 50% of the nitrogen being lost. It is here that the Government could gain some big wins on nitrogen usage reduction by ensuring well-tailored training for farmers and perhaps a few pertinent questions addressed to ag-chem companies and their agronomists—here I glance nervously at my noble friend Lord Fuller—to demonstrate that less can mean more.

To carry on what the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, mentioned, 80% of our potato crops follow cover or catch crops which, as he explained, convert nitrogen from the atmosphere into the soil. This too has therefore significantly reduced the amount of artificial nitrogen needed. The noble Viscount also mentioned wide rotations and not having a monoculture of wheat year after year. Of course, a wide six-course rotation makes a huge difference.

I take issue with the noble Viscount saying that these innovations first came in the Netherlands. If I can be a little immodest, my four-greats grandfather, Coke of Norfolk, along with Turnip Townshend, were very much involved in the agricultural revolution in Britain. The agrarian revolution of course facilitated the Industrial Revolution, which also happened first in Britain. Although the Dutch are jolly good at what they do, I take issue with the noble Viscount; maybe I will raise it with him afterwards and we can discuss where the agricultural revolution started.

Anyway, many agricultural research institutes, such as the John Innes Centre in my part of the world, Rothamsted Research and indeed UEA, have departments monitoring these reductions in nitrogen use without a deleterious effect to crop yields. The Government need to help to promulgate these well-researched messages from such august institutions across to the farming industry. Many progressive farmers are already taking advantage of financial savings achieved by reduced inputs and are proud of their resultant improved environmental credentials. Farm shows such as Groundswell, a regenerative farming conference started by the Cherry family in Hertfordshire, are championing these rediscovered wisdoms and, encouragingly, grow in size each year at the expense of more conventional shows.

While there are undoubtedly rogue farmers who need enforcement action taken against them, the vast majority are hard-working, honest people, many of them, in current economic and legislative conditions, grinding out a living. In my experience in life it is the carrot, not the stick, that works more effectively in a democracy such as ours, so I ask the Minister to advocate that training be prioritised rather than enforcement.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I sincerely thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the committee for forcing to the forefront an issue on which it has long been evident that action is urgently needed in the UK and around the world. I join the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, in saying that we have had a comprehensive introduction to a comprehensive report. But because I am a Green, I am going to go further and get into some broader systematic and international issues before coming back to some of the key points, which have already been raised but need to be stressed.

I thank the Sustainable Nitrogen Alliance for its excellent briefing on this issue, which starts by describing the nitrogen paradox: something so essential to life and food production is also a major pollutant. It is a threat to the life and well-being of humans in the UK, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, just set out, and to the health and well-being of the ecosystems on which we are all ultimately dependent. Nitrogen makes a perfect case study for the current broken state of our food system—indeed, our current broken economic system. It shows the disastrous outcome of producing more, selling more and consequently dumping more into the environment.

Noble Lords may be aware of the brilliant little video “The Story of Stuff”. You could make a similar, if perhaps for some tastes a little too excrement-filled, video about nitrogen. It goes right through to the adverts that noble Lords in the Committee have almost certainly seen today, plugging ultra-processed food-like substances sold wrapped in plastic and shouting in large letters “high protein” as though they were health foods. This is despite the fact that protein consumption in the UK is around 1.5 times our dietary needs, with the resultant nitrogen-rich waste flowing into the sewage system, into wastewater treatment plants and, all too often, directly into our rivers and seas. We know that these products and advertisements for them are damaging our public environmental health, yet away they blaze. As comprehensive and informed as the committee’s report is, that may be stretching beyond the direct topic of today, although it is essential to it.

I will go back to what noble Lords might call “the other end”, and something that has already been raised several times: the Haber-Bosch process. The so-called miracle that enabled the “green revolution”—I am putting that in scare quotes as it used vast quantities of fossil fuels to produce nitrogen fertiliser that would further heat the planet, destroy soil ecosystems and enable the development of industrial food systems disastrous for human health—was anything but green.

With the greatest respect, I have to respond directly to the contribution of the noble Earl, Lord Leicester. He said—of course, he is right—that, if you put the same crop in the same field in the same farming system and you put more or less nitrogen on it, you get differences in yield. Of course you do, because that is the primitive system of outdated 20th-century science behind our current arable farming systems. The noble Earl also spoke about crop rotations but we need far broader rotations. We are going to need many different crops in the climate change world that we are in now.

We need agro-ecological systems that work with nature instead of trying to turn it into a factory. I point the Committee to a single book that sets this direction of travel out very clearly: Miraculous Abundance, whose subtitle is One Quarter Acre, Two French Farmers, and Enough Food to Feed the World. It uses the fact that plants have evolved on land over some 500 million years to get their nitrogen and other essential nutrients by working co-operatively with fungi and bacteria in immensely complex systems. What we have done is throw nitrogen and other chemicals on those soils and destroyed those systems—then we have nutrient-deficient plants.

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

I just make the point that the whole point of regenerative agriculture is to regenerate those mycorrhizal fungi and the soil. If the noble Baroness is saying that we cannot and should not use artificial nitrogen—I am advocating for using less of it—half the world will starve.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

There is a whole other debate there, but I go back to an Italian proverb from the 1930s: “Artificial fertiliser is good for the father and bad for the son”. I entirely agree with the noble Earl that we have to restore those systems, but they cannot work with the application of artificial nitrogen.

I shall now agree with the noble Earl to balance things out. He spoke about nitrogen as the elephant in the room. I agree with that, although I would use a different metaphor: the idea of a nitrogen bomb. We have to fit within the world’s planetary limits. We need to be fixing only 62 million tonnes of nitrogen on land a year; here, I am of course talking on a global scale. That is the process by which atmospheric nitrogen is converted into nitrogen as compounds by either microbes or human industrial processes. We cannot do more than 62 million tonnes but we are currently fixing at least 300 million tonnes—five times as much as the world can bear.

This is where I come to a question for the Minister; indeed, let me make a constructive suggestion. The International Nitrogen Management System project was set up by the UN to do, in essence, what the IPPC did for carbon emissions: set global targets. It set out targets in the Colombo Declaration, which the UK has not signed. We are operating in a global environment in which we are seeing massive cuts in international aid and development support. One area in which the UK could show real leadership and support is acting on a diplomatic scale, with very modest spending, to encourage that international effort. I know and understand that the committee was focused on the UK, but it is important to look at this on a global scale.

I draw noble Lords’ attention to that awful single graphic of planetary boundaries from the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Seven of the nine boundaries it has identified have been exceeded. Biogeochemical flows are where the dark orange for danger extends, with the “N” as far beyond the safe operating space as the other screaming graphical element, “Novel entities”, for which, again, the so-called green revolution bears significant blame.

I have said slightly more than I intended; I have focused on the big picture. I shall finish by focusing on some of the specifics in this report. I hope that we will hear some good news from the Minister. We have already heard from other noble Lords that we expect from the Minister today a cross-government, holistic nitrogen strategy across sectors; that is obviously needed. I note the fact that Scotland is using the national nitrogen balance sheet approach, which seems to be working. Surely that would add value for England. Can the Minister update the Committee on what assessment the Government have made of the Scottish approach? Do they intend to pilot or adopt a similar framework in England? What timetable is there for considering that?

We have heard clearly—credit where it is due—that the Government plan to include nutrient circularity in their circular economy strategy, although I note that that is apparently turning into a circular economy growth plan. I refer back to where I started: we are creating a problem whereby growing the whole system is only going to grow the problem. None the less, I should like to hear from the Minister today, whether it is called a growth plan or a strategy, whether the Government plan to apply the waste hierarchy to this work so that reduction is given overwhelming priority in what is happening with nitrogen in this system.

Also, do the Government plan to apply the strongest possible controls to prevent so-called pollution swapping, thereby ensuring that solutions applied to one sector of the economy do not drive environmental harm in another? There is a particular concern here around energy recovery from manure incineration, which means burning a useful nutrient and rich resource for energy recovery and means that those nutrients are not then going into agriculture or nature; you are generating air pollution, carbon dioxide emissions and a phosphorous-rich ash that needs another outlet.

Noble Lords may think that I have been controversial up to now, but I am going back to controversy because I return to that issue of growth. We are soon going to hear some more about slurry and the issues of intensive animal agriculture. We are in the nation of England, where the number of large, intensive livestock mega farms is continuing to grow despite the unsustainable pollution impacts of those units. I note that the Environmental Audit Committee has said that there should be a presumption against expansion, at least in polluted catchments.

This inquiry supports the Corry and Cunliffe reviews’ recommendations for gap analysis of the existing regulations on agricultural water pollution and for the current rules for other intensive livestock farms to be extended to intensive beef and dairy units. That is a step but, ultimately, I put it to the Minister that we must acknowledge that the factory farming of animals is a nitrogen problem, a huge pollution problem, an antimicrobial resistance problem and, of course, a huge animal welfare problem—although I acknowledge that the Government put out before Christmas some good animal welfare provisions, which were somewhat buried in the Christmas rush; I look forward to seeing them be put into force at speed.

I have probably spoken for long enough but I want to add one final point; it picks up points made powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, about the human health impacts of all this. As others have already said, this issue causes 30,000 deaths a year in the UK. Those people are someone’s grandmother or child. We have long known about the impacts on asthma of nitrogen dioxide pollution, in particular PM2.5; we are also increasingly coming to understand just how important this is in terms of cardiovascular, respiratory and even musculoskeletal diseases. All of the evidence regarding the human health impacts is there—and is growing fast. We are taking steps, particularly in reducing the burning of fossil fuels. We are going to see a reduction in the sources of other forms of this pollution, which will only mean that the issues we are addressing here around agricultural emissions are going to rise up the agenda and rise in terms of their percentage impact on human health.

Sustainable Farming Incentive

Earl of Leicester Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

As I mentioned earlier, this is not the first time that SFI has been paused. The way the scheme operates is that it opens for applications and, when the funding is used up, it is then paused until we look at the next round of SFI funding. It is difficult to judge when that is likely to come to an end. In response to the noble Lord’s final question, we are aware that the SFI scheme needs reforming, which is what we are now looking at doing. We need to get it right and we need it to work better for farmers and for the environment. That is why, as I mentioned, we will be talking to stakeholders, including those who use the scheme and those who we would like to use it but who perhaps find it difficult to apply to at the moment. I am particularly talking about smaller farms and upland farms; we need to be much more targeted on them. We are aware that we need to reform it, and we are working on that at the moment.

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I refer the House to my register of interests. It is somewhat disingenuous of the Minister to say that the SFI scheme has been paused twice. The previous two occasions were actually pilot schemes, which were then rolled forward, so I do not accept that. Following on from the question from the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, what assessment has been made of whether Defra has sufficient resources and staff to deliver commitments across the environment and food security, and what is the Minister’s assessment of the Rural Payments Agency’s ability to handle the change?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

As I said, we need to reform the system and we are working on that; we want it to work as effectively as it possibly can, both to support farmers and to deliver the environmental targets that we need. I have visited the RPA offices in Carlisle, and the staff there work incredibly hard. We are looking at how we can improve the digital support they get, for example, because we need to ensure that the RPA is fit for the future and able to support farmers as best as it can in the way that it needs to.

Management of Hedgerows (England) Regulations 2024

Earl of Leicester Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I have been having sleepless nights about this, noble Lords may be pleased to hear. I was always a great fan of cross-compliance. It was quite a low-key instrument; nevertheless, it could be deployed. Of course, hedges are vital for wildlife and for carbon. They provide linear routes through our landscapes and join up patches of habitat. Filling the gaps in hedges, for example, is really important, for all these reasons.

Turning to my anxiety, it took ages to establish whether there was going to be a statutory instrument to fill the gap left by the demise of cross-compliance, and it then took some time for that to come forward. In a way, my great regret is that we have not used this opportunity. For heaven’s sake, the benefits of leaving Europe are few enough, but improving the situation for hedges would have been one of them. I would have preferred it if the Government had removed the three existing exemptions: for fields under two hectares, for hedges younger than five years and for the no-cutting period. When you look at the consultation, you see that there was not really much support among the farming community for retaining them. This could have been an opportunity absolutely to re-recognise the value of hedges, particularly in fields of under two hectares, and the importance of hedges younger than five years having protection from the beginning.

Apart from lecturing the Minister on this and lying awake at night worrying about it, I simply want to ask the Minister for four things. First, will he re-examine these exemptions? We have this wretched statutory instrument, and let us get the damn thing in because, at the moment, there is no protection for these hedges; but there is an opportunity here to improve on what Europe is doing and re-examine the exemptions.

Secondly, there should be a real proposition to extend the no-cutting period beyond even that in the instrument. My own wildlife trust, of which I am patron—I declare an interest—the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, has done a big hazel dormouse project that shows that there are multiple active nests during the period from September to October. If hedges are cut at that point, it prevents the population really thriving, and this is a very threatened species.

Maintaining hedges and not cutting them for even longer provides valuable berries and other food for winter wildlife and, as the Minister said, for farmland birds that are really in decline, such as the turtle dove, linnet, cirl bunting and yellowhammer. Bedford used to be the yellowhammer capital of the world, as far as I could tell, and you would be very hard put to find one at all now. In these species, late broods are disproportionately important. If they can get a third brood away, the population has a greater chance of increasing rather than standing still or declining. Again, extending the no-cutting period is something farmers would appreciate.

Thirdly, I ask the Minister to think about two matters not connected to hedgerows, but whereby we lose as a result of losing cross-compliance: water body buffers and soil erosion conditions, which are absolutely vital. They are hot in the public mind at the moment, particularly in the light of water pollution. Will he undertake to look at them and produce statutory instruments to reinstate them?

Lastly, I know that the Minister likes to tell me when I ask him things that are not particularly germane to the subject in hand, that are not his brief or are above his pay grade—or he will have another way of sending me away with a sore heart—but I hope that he might bump into his DLUHC colleagues and look in a concerted way at not just hedgerows that are subject to agricultural practice but those threatened by development. I know that one should not take personal examples as the norm, but I cannot help feeling that, in both the planning applications against which I have fought in the last two years, the local planning authority chose to ignore the hedgerow regulations in the planning advice. It destroyed hedgerows that not only are vital for carbon and wildlife but have huge historic lineage. If he were to bump into the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in order to tell her that, it would be extremely helpful.

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my farming interests as laid out in the in the register. I congratulate Defra and the Government; a lot of thought has gone into this. It was said that we have not had any regulations protecting hedgerows since we came out of cross-compliance, but I would just like to big up farmers, I suppose. Years and years ago, nearly every single hedge would be cut every year. Then, they were encouraged to cut them every second year; then, a further development was to cut one side a year and maybe leave the other for three years. Now, a lot of farmers in the regenerative movement and others are barely cutting hedges. As the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said, that provides many more berries, habitats and suchlike. So, the fact that we have not had any regulations for six months or so is not the end of the world; I do not think we have lost any great hedges.

I take issue with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, suggesting that we should continue not cutting hedges after 31 August. Two or three weeks later and we will be in autumn; all nesting birds will have nested well by then.

My question is very simple and follows on from what the two noble Baronesses said. It is about really small fields; I am talking now about private householders. While all the farmers are obeying the law and not cutting between 1 March and 31 August, you can drive out anywhere in the countryside or in small towns and villages and you will see plenty of householders cutting their own garden hedges. So, does this rule apply to them? If it does, I suspect that it will be very hard to enforce. I am sure there are plenty of gardeners becoming more aware of the importance of their hedgerows as habitats for nesting birds and suchlike, but I would be very interested to have an answer on this if my noble friend the Minister has one.

Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Earl of Leicester Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 12th September 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[The Earl of Leicester]

3: Clause 1, page 1, line 3, leave out “an” and insert “a wild”

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise that I was unable to attend Second Reading. I was very keen to do so but unavoidably had to attend an important meeting at home. I refer to my interests as set out in the register. That includes my family’s management of Holkham National Nature Reserve, one of the most prolific in terms of conservation success in the land. I also stalk red deer in Scotland but have never hunted in other parts of the world.

This Bill will provide the legislative framework for understanding when someone commits a criminal offence. Therefore, in order to be fair and to avoid multiple legal challenges, clarifications around the definition of animals impacted by the Bill and the hunter himself or herself are required. Without clarity around these definitions, the Bill in its current form raises challenges for import and export agents preparing documentation relating to the importation of a hunting trophy into the UK and for Border Force officials tasked with enforcing the new legislation.

The purpose of my amendment is to highlight the extent to which the Bill has expanded in scope from the original manifesto commitment, which addressed endangered species—perhaps 10, in the recent UK context—to over 6,200 species, and the extent to which this highly disproportionate approach will create a far greater administrative burden than seems necessary. Amendment 3 would ensure that the new words “a wild” precede “animal”.

The Bill is clearly meant to be about conservation. That much has been made clear by the Government, who have stated that it was to be enacted in order to protect the world’s threatened species. If the Bill is about conservation, then it should be about wild animals, as the hunting of domestic, non-wild or captive animals is not a conservation concern. Such a ban does not, therefore, advance the intention of the Bill. This is not a small matter. There are many cases where animals are killed in situations which would not be classed as wild. The killing of tigers in South Africa is one such example. While very many of us would find that morally repugnant, it is clear that this Bill is about conservation and that the killing of a tiger in South Africa has no detrimental impact on wild tiger conservation in Asia.

If this is not about conservation and the killing of wild animals but more about welfare, then we should presumably take this time to address the killing of livestock in this country. It is worth remembering that, every year in the UK, approximately 2.6 million cattle, 10 million pigs, 14.5 million sheep and lambs, 80 million fish and 950 million birds are slaughtered for human consumption. Given that people can live perfectly well without meat, and plenty do, it is hard to argue that that kind of killing is not done only for the pleasure of people eating meat, but it clearly dwarfs by many orders of magnitude the average of 90 to 115 wild animals which are imported annually to the UK. The Bill, then, is clearly meant to be about conservation and therefore wild, rather than non-wild, animals.

Although it should be about conservation, in reality it can be tricky to find what is actually wild and what is not. We can see this complexity in our own wildlife legislation. Mark Avery has discussed this matter with regard to pheasants, which, for example, are determined as livestock when bred in captivity but, as soon as they are released, are deemed to be wild. This kind of complexity also applies to the kind of animals we see discussed all the time in the trophy hunting debate. Lions, for example, are one of the most high-profile species mentioned, especially since the killing of Cecil the lion. However, when is a lion a wild lion?

In South Africa, for example, there is a complex scenario where lions may be captive, managed or wild. According to credible organisations such as Panthera, South Africa has between 2,700 and 3,200 wild and managed lions, split roughly 50/50. The wild animals live in national parks such as the Kruger National Park; managed lions inhabit private reserves such as Phinda and Tswalu, and are managed in the name of keeping the gene pool diverse. Others are captive; the South African Predator Association keeps track of captive lions and captive breeding facilities, but not everyone who breeds lions in South Africa needs to be a member, and not everyone who is provides statistics. According to an article in National Geographic, the 2015 estimate was of around 7,000 lions in captivity.

Ideally, the animals covered by this Bill should also be wild animals which are native to that country. There are many cases where exotic animals cause immense concern in terms of their impact on nature biodiversity, particularly in Australia. One trophy-hunted non-native species in Australia is the camel, which needs to have its population controlled after feral populations were established by explorers and colonisers. Another example is the tiger, as I mentioned before. Although prohibited in a country in which tigers naturally occur, tiger hunting does happen in South Africa. Between 2002 and 2011, 17 tiger trophies were exported from South Africa—although, mercifully, none to the UK.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

My Lords, if Amendment 3 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 4 or 5 for reasons of pre-emption.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I do not wish to add to what I said earlier, but my noble friend has asked me something specifically. There are considerable concerns about the hunting of captive bred animals, including what is termed “canned hunting”. Such trophies should not be exempt from the import ban. The concept of what most of us imagine canned hunting to be is one that excites all our wrath and indignation about a practice that, in risk terms, is like shooting a cow in a field. I entirely understand, and I think that everybody is keen to find a way in which to differentiate it.

We could find ourselves dancing on the head of a legal pin here. What is an enclosure? There could be a small enclosure the size of this room, which would of course be ridiculous; there are also hunting concessions that are fenced in and, effectively, a managed population of animals. I do not want to get into that debate or make legislation that would create circumstances in which a court would be sought to adjudicate that legal definition. Therefore, I cannot recommend that this Committee supports this amendment, and respectfully urge the noble Earl to withdraw it.

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I thank those noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Bellingham, who highlighted many examples around the world, and the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, who highlighted the importance of differentiating between wild and captive animals. However, like my noble friend Lord Caithness, I will not seek to divide the Committee on this issue. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 3 withdrawn.

Land Use in England Committee Report

Earl of Leicester Excerpts

Tuesday 25th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I do not want to appear too self-congratulatory as I refer your Lordships to my interests as set out in the register, as a landowner and farmer in north Norfolk. On our holding, to quote from the summary of Making the Most Out of England’s Land, we have achieved

“place-based multifunctionality—the concept that simultaneous multiple benefits can be achieved in the same location”.

Examples include food production with carbon sequestration, with biodiversity, with renewable energy production; biodiversity, wetlands, access, tourism, landscape and commerce; and old and new housing and new office space, with the latter powered by renewable energies, with forestry and carbon sequestration. These are all examples of land sharing. That, of course, is only an example of multifunctionality at a localised scale, but it is mirrored up and down the country in the private and charitable sectors.

I briefly pay tribute to my fellow committee members, some of whom are in the Chamber, and one who is not—the noble Lord, Lord Curry. My noble friend Lady Rock, who is sitting in front of me, said she wanted tenant farmers to be able to carry out actions on their farms without the permission of their landlords. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Curry, saying during a committee meeting that it would not occur to him not to ask permission from his landlord to do something that might deviate from the original plan.

I believe it was the noble Baroness, Lady Young, who asked for this Select Committee on land use to be held, but sadly she is not here. I pay tribute to her and to my noble friend Lord Cameron of Dillington, whose pedigree confirmed him as an excellent choice to chair the committee. He worked as an elected officer for the Country Land and Business Association between 1991 and 1997, and as its president for the last two of those years. From 1997 he was a member of the UK Government’s Round Table on Sustainable Development, and he chaired the Countryside Agency for five years until 2004. I will stop at 2004, lest I embarrass him. He is also a practitioner, of course, managing his own estate in Somerset, which I believe he has now handed over to one of his children. He was an excellent chair.

I pay tribute to Simon Keal, our clerk. I understand that we do not like to point in this House, so I will do a broad sweep of the hand to a smiling Simon in the corner. He and his team did a fantastic job. I also pay tribute to Alister Scott, who is professor of geography and planning at Northumbria University, and finally to the 106 people who submitted written evidence and the 52 we interviewed face to face or on Teams.

I turn to a couple of aspects of the report and, where necessary, the Government’s response to it. I make no apology for referring to rural matters, as that is where my knowledge lies. According to our report, agriculture takes place on 63.1% of England’s land. Some of that follows the land sparing route and is very intensive. How sustainable that is in the long term is questionable. Encouragingly, an increasing number of farmers are embracing renewable agricultural techniques.

There are two things that our report does not recognise, and I blame myself for them both. My noble friend Lord Devon pointed out that we did not refer to the importance of wetlands in our report. They are the quickest sequestrator of carbon. The other one to mention is the multiple benefits that renewable farming brings, such as reduced chemical inputs, longer rotations, the mix of livestock back into arable operations leading to improved biodiversity and—this is the point we neglected to highlight—improved carbon sequestration. It is not just trees that sequester carbon; cover crops and leguminous herbal and grass lays can provide a green cover on the soil for up to 12 months.

Allied to rediscovering ancient wisdom from the agricultural revolution of the late 18th century, it is essential that agriculture also embraces technological advances. We recently passed the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act, which could give us drought-resistant seeds, for example, leading to resilience against climate change, higher yields and possibly the need for less arable land. Precision agriculture using robotic machinery in the fields, with cameras that can identify weeds within crops and either zap or spray just those single weeds, will lead to huge reductions in chemical usage and damage to the land with huge benefits to biodiversity and the bottom line.

It was encouraging to see in paragraph 22 of the Government’s response their acknowledgement of the importance of making open sources of data more accessible and usable for land managers. That can only improve management decisions. We also heard evidence of vertical growing of salad crops using technology, often in urban areas closer to market.

I turn briefly to access to green spaces and the countryside, which we all know has numerous mental health and wellness benefits. I add a note of caution: this should be handled with a great deal of thought, because unfettered access to the countryside by humans, dogs and cats in a suburban environment has a deleterious effect on biodiversity. I have just come back from Iceland, a country of only 360,000 people, where the correlation between very few people and a plethora of flora and fauna could not be more obvious. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, in his argument about freer access to the countryside, did not even mention biodiversity.

Finally, on tree-planting, it was good to see the Government highlighting, in paragraph 15 of their response, the importance of encouraging good woodland management. That is something that has not happened a great deal in Britain—our reputation for managing woodland is not as good as that of the continent—but it improves biodiversity such as by cutting in butterfly glades. A 30% thinning of a wood every seven to 10 years lets in more light and speeds up growth of trees in a multi-canopied woodland, which increases carbon sequestration and, importantly, carbon storage in the wood itself.

To conclude, I again thank everyone who took part. I am happy with some of the Government’s reaction to our report, but I have concerns that siloed thinking is still prevalent, with Defra very much taking the lead, almost to the exclusion of other government departments. Making the Most out of England’s Land is a great report and a great start, and I am excited about what the future can bring thanks to this body of work.

Animal Welfare (Electronic Collars) (England) Regulations 2023

Earl of Leicester Excerpts

Tuesday 13th June 2023 Grand Committee

[The Duke of Montrose (Con)]

I thank my noble friend the Minister for laying out these regulations and the work that has gone into drawing them up. I declare my interest as a vice-president of the National Sheep Association. Of course, worrying by dogs is a major concern for the industry. I have had sheep worried by family pets, and it is very sad for all concerned because, at the moment, the only cure for a dog that is worrying sheep is to have it put down. If a dear family pet fails in this way, often people send it away somewhere else, which does not really solve the situation.

Recently, the secretary of the NSA issued a statement that some farmers in Wales are finding that they can train a dog not to worry sheep by using electronic collars. It is not a question of monitoring the collar but of training the dog. This could prevent the putting down of healthy dogs. Has this been considered? The collars are limited to shocks of about 5,000 volts, whereas electric fences and so on can be about 35,000 volts, which animals quickly come to recognise. This is an area where the limits covered by this measure might have to be reconsidered.

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a landowner and farmer. We have a flock of sheep and, of course, I keep dogs. These days, it seems that every public document states that it is evidence-based, but too often the scientific research and the evidence involved are pre-organised to produce a political result—and so it is with this legislation, prepared by Defra.

Wales, a country with a great deal of sheep farming, banned electronic dog collars a few years ago. A year after the ban, Welsh farmers reported four times more dog attacks on sheep and that they had needed to shoot three times as many dogs. At home, in 2020, our flock lost five sheep to dog attacks and two in 2021. One was saved but was never the same again, and perhaps we should have euthanised the poor thing when we found it. Last year, we lost 23 sheep. I am not saying that this legislation would have saved all those dogs, because clearly there is an issue with responsible dog ownership. Most responsible dog owners keep their dogs on leads. However, we are about to pass this legislation. Defra understood that 500,000 electronic dog collars were in operation in this country. The RSPCA’s 2021 figures for cruelty to animals reported 1,094 killings of animals and 38,087 abandonments. How many e-collar incidents of cruelty were reported? Zero.

I have had 15 dogs. I have had five generations of working spaniels. In answer to the emotive speech by the noble Lord, Lord Jones, about dog owners loving their dogs, of course I love my dogs. The fifth generation of my working spaniels is a batshit crazy spaniel. I am sure that noble Lords with spaniels will agree with this. I try to love him. Well, I do love him. For Christmas, he got an e-collar. The first thing that I did was use the “vibrate” button on him, but in worst-case scenarios I use the “shock” button. I am lucky that the Government are allowing me a transition period to February 2024; I am certain he will be a brilliant dog by then. He wants to do a good job but he is a lively animal.

What will happen after February 2024 to the 500,000 people in this country who own an electronic dog collar? This legislation says that they will be subject to unlimited fines. I know about this, so I will have to destroy my electronic dog collar and put it in the bin, but what will happen to someone found with one who is unaware of this legislation? What sort of fine will they get?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to the SI. He will be pleased to know that I am happy with it and have only a couple of points to make.

In contrast to the previous SI, this one seeks to protect animals from harm and amends the Animal Welfare Act 2006. Once implemented, it will ban the use of handheld devices and prohibit the use of electric shock collars. Anyone found guilty of using a handheld device will be subject to unlimited fines. This is quite clearly a good thing.

Defra conducted a public consultation in 2018. Most respondents supported a ban on all types of electronic training collar but some were in favour of retaining the ability to use them provided they did not deliver an electric shock. Animals quickly learn from these devices and they are useful in keeping animals safe near busy roads by keeping them contained in a restricted area. There is also an opportunity for their use in preventing dogs escaping and chasing livestock, as we have heard. Sheep worrying is a very serious matter—

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

Might I suggest that the seven-week public consultation in 2018 received 6,700 responses, of which 64% opposed making it an offence to attach an e-collar to a cat or a dog and 63% opposed making it an offence to be responsible for a cat or a dog who had an e-collar?

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

I thank the noble Earl for his correction. However, I was going on the information that I had received in the SI.

As I was saying, sheep worrying is a very serious matter and one where every effort should be made to prevent it happening.

I welcome the consultation but wonder why it has taken so long since its completion in 2018—five years ago—to bring forward the SI. In the intervening period, many dogs will have suffered electric shock treatment, which could have been prevented.

It is useful to make a distinction between domestic dogs and working dogs. I would support that.

There is a great difference in the way the two systems work. Collars that make a sound or vibrate are not prohibited under this SI. Paragraph 7.12 of the Explanatory Memorandum is very clear on that. It says:

“As electronic training collars that emit sound, vibration or some other non-shock signals are not prohibited under this instrument, they will remain available for situations where voice, sound or other recall methods cannot be used”.


An electric shock is a form of punishment for a dog or a cat, whereas the other system is a more humane way of encouraging domestic animals to adopt a different behaviour. I have seen some of the comments made in response to the consultation, including from those who believe that dogs will go on killing if electric shock collars are banned—the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, seems to indicate that this will be the case. This is the response, I believe, of the farmer and the shepherd, and some weight should be attached to that response. A collar that provides an electric shock is the tool—certainly in a domestic situation—of the uncaring. A better option is for a collar that emits a sound or a vibration.

The noble Lord, Lord Jones, raised an important point about the Armed Forces, and I am very interested in the Minister’s response.

From my point of view, this SI is long overdue in preventing unnecessary suffering endured by dogs and cats. I fully support the ban and the measures contained in the SI; there are exclusions, but I am happy with them.

Agricultural Tenancies

Earl of Leicester Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord speaks an awful lot of sense. To an extent, it is impossible for government to be perfect here because, as he says, we are dealing with human relationships. Government should create the right incentives. We are talking about a business relationship. There are so many different types of tenure in this country—owner-occupier, tenancies under the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986, farm business tenancies under the 1995 Act, graziers, contract farmers, share farmers and multiple graziers on commons. The complications of trying to create a farming support system that can be accessed by them, particularly in areas such as Countryside Stewardship, are really difficult, but it is vital that they are there.

The noble Lord is absolutely right that, if we get this wrong and government tries to impose things that the market does not want, we will end up getting the worst of all possible worlds—people we want to see on the land not on the land. We want to make sure that we keep this vibrant, diverse form of occupation and use of land, which requires landlords and tenants to work together for their mutual benefit and for the societal benefit of us all, through the use of our vital natural capital, which will deliver many more wider societal benefits.

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a landowner with a number of tenants, as a farmer and as an agricultural contractor. I too welcome the excellent Rock review, but I quite understand the Government not accepting all 70 recommendations. Some of the proposals in the review have the potential to harm confidence in the tenancy industry. While they may enhance the interests of existing tenants, they would reduce the land available to new tenants. We must remember that tenancy is not the only entry into agriculture; there are share farming arrangements and a lot of young people start off as contractors and build up as they increase their capital. Can my noble friend elaborate on inheritance tax and on how longer tenancies, with regard to planting of trees et cetera, might affect inheritance tax for landowners?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank my noble friend; his experience is really important in this debate.

I do not know that any report that has so many recommendations has been accepted in full by any Government, but we think the vast majority of these recommendations are really good. Some of them, such as the inheritance tax point, is one where we think we need to do more work. Government does not exist in an ivory tower; that is why we commissioned this call for evidence, which closed on Friday. We want to explore more ways to encourage more landlords and tenants to consider a longer-term tenancy agreement while retaining the flexibility that farm business tenancies currently provide.

As we transition to new farming schemes, there will be more certainty and encouragement for both landlords and tenants to enter into longer-term tenancy agreements and we are designing our new schemes to be accessible to as many farmers and land managers as possible. As I said earlier, at the Spring Budget the Chancellor launched this consultation to explore the extension of inheritance tax relief to include land in environmental land management schemes and this consultation will also explore the benefits and impacts of the Rock review recommendation to limit inheritance tax relief to land let out for a minimum of eight years and analyse further what impacts that would have on the length of a tenancy agreement. A number of noble Lords made the very good point that if one goes about this in the wrong way, one achieves a perverse outcome, which is that fewer landlords are incentivised to let land and we suffer because our tenure becomes less diverse and less accessible to new entrants.

Growth Plan 2022

Earl of Leicester Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, if we are swift, we will have enough time for both noble Lords. We will hear from the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, and then the noble Lord, Lord Winston.

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my farming interests as listed in the register. Can my noble friend outline what this Government are doing to encourage more young people into the farming industry and to improve our food production?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, this is absolutely vital, as was brought home to me yesterday at the reception organised by TIAH and the noble Lord, Lord Curry. Teaching people the necessary skills is vital if we are to see the average age of farmers—which is my age, 62—come right down, and we can achieve that only if they have them.

Game Birds (Cage Breeding) Bill [HL]

Earl of Leicester Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 25th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, I thank your Lordships for allowing me to speak at such late notice, and I refer to my interests in the register with regard to land management, farming and forestry.

Policy towards animal welfare, including the welfare of game birds, should be based on principle and evidence, not opinion. The evidence from the Defra research in 2015 clearly demonstrated that there was no need for further restrictions on the use of laying units, including raised laying units, when they are used in accordance with the existing statutory code of practice and industry guidance. The evidence from this research suggests that restricting or banning the use of properly managed raised laying systems could very well compromise the welfare of breeding birds. Advice from the game bird veterinary sector suggests that if RLUs are replaced with alternative systems, a rise in the use of antibiotics is almost inevitable. This is important.

There are two fundamental advantages to raised units from a health and welfare perspective: the health of the breeding birds is better in raised units as they do not come into contact with contaminated ground conditions, and eggs produced are always cleaner than floor-laid eggs and therefore have a significantly lower chance of yolk sac infection or other diseases such as rotavirus. Both these factors have had an important impact on antibiotic use in the game sector. Indeed, over the last six years, I think the game sector has reduced the use of antibiotics by 70% and therefore the build-up of antimicrobial resistance—AMR. The WHO has predicted that AMR, if left unchecked, could be responsible for more human deaths in the world than cancer by 2050.

Finally, I will go part of the way to answering the assertion or question from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on the number of prosecutions. There have been no successful prosecutions against game farms by the Animal and Plant Health Agency, which carries out regular targeted game bird farm inspections. We also need to put this into perspective: each year, 50 million pheasants are reared, but we must remember that 1 billion broiler chickens are also reared in this country.