Environmental Land Management Schemes

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, it is an excellent organisation and I can confirm that it is among a number of bodies engaged in tests and trials.

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

My Lords, does the Minister agree that some farmers, especially new entrants now receiving direct payments on arable land or pasture, could miss out after 2024? This could be if the land, as he says, is unsuitable for further stewardship, sustainable ELMS improvements or rewilding. Will they have to leave farming or will they, in that case, receive some form of compensation?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, I may need to look at Hansard to help the noble Earl. The new entrants’ support scheme, which we want to encourage, begins in 2022. The noble Earl may have been talking about retirement lump sums, but I think I had better get back to him as I was not quite sure of his question.

Agriculture Bill

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

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

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

My Lords, first, I pay tribute to all the farmers who have suffered during this pandemic, coming on top of last winter’s floods. Ambridge was slow off the mark, but after the initial shock, most farmers responded well. Many have found alternative local means of survival. They are complaining about lockdown less than others because they have to be outdoors, feeding the nation, but they rightly complain about some aspects of the Bill.

I come from a generation horrified by the food mountains and fortress Europe of the 1970s, with the obvious inequalities in farming, the waste and the lack of protection for developing countries. I belonged to organisations that campaigned against these things. We can now say that they succeeded, although there is always more to be done. The UK, among others, shifted the argument away from deserving French farmers to a wider demand for a greener Europe less dependent on subsidies. Here we are, still benefiting from the old system but gradually dismantling it at last in favour of policies that help the environment and the planet.

Since then, my wife and I have inherited largely tenanted farmland, and have come to see the other side of the picture: the continuing importance of direct farm payments in the family farm economy. The Bill is necessary but the gradual phasing out of these payments is absolutely essential, especially when you think about how much agriculture has been set back by the virus.

I will support any Lords amendments on standards and welfare. Noble Lords may have noticed that MPs from the West Country have been heading such amendments. They are no more than common sense coming from MPs who represent people who live and breathe farming. They also reflect the views of a large number of farming organisations, as has already been mentioned.

I read Victoria Prentis’s response to those amendments. She argued that they are “well-meaning” but will have “unintended consequences” and said that “all EU standards” will become part of domestic law by next year. These are merely reassurances. How can she know that? She said that the proposed new clauses would disrupt our food supplies and risk our potato and whisky exports. How can she know that? After the transition, anything could happen. We are already deep in negotiation with the US. As the noble Baroness, Lady Young, the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and other noble Lords said—remembering TTIP and the EU’s own battles—we will be under considerable pressure to lower standards.

Vets are also concerned about the preventive use of antibiotics in farming, which is due to be banned in 2022. When George Eustice describes US animal welfare as “woefully deficient”, he is thinking of mass medication with antibiotics. I can understand differences between Ministers on these issues but this may be one that Defra got right and the Trade Secretary got wrong. I read the joint letter.

On forestry, I have sympathy with the successive government attempts to combine better management with more respect for wildlife and the environment—excluding squirrels, of course. Nowadays, there is no shortage of jargon in the Forestry Commission’s draft woodland plan.

What about the lack of investment? With climate change, there was euphoria about trees saving the planet —many organisations took advantage of that—but even before the virus came along, any enthusiasm in the Treasury had vanished. Where has the money gone? Perhaps too much goes into deer fencing, planning for deer fencing and consultancy of every kind.

Finally, I expect that the Minister has had a briefing from the Ramblers. The association makes a lot of demands but it has a point about funding for rights of way. As an owner, I have generally found RoW officers extremely co-operative, but the machinery seems to turn slowly. Can we have an assurance that rights-of-way matching grants will be more generous and more forthcoming?

Ivory Bill

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 13th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the Bill very much, but will the Chief Whip say why it was necessary to get the consent of the Queen? Is it because she is worried about the value of the ivory that she might own if it were sold, or is she worried about elephants? They are both good causes, but it seems a bit odd. We should be pleased to have her consent, but does the Duchy of Cornwall own ivory? Why did we not seek the consent of the Duchy as well?

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, I join in the congratulations to the Government, who have worked for several years on this really important Bill. I beg for one minute at the end of this Third Reading. I said in Committee that I wanted to see some form of impact assessment or annual review of the effectiveness of the Bill. I recognise how hard that would be to achieve because, as the Minister pointed out, statistics on control are already kept by many different organisations.

I was hoping to encourage DfID and its partner organisations, mainly in Africa, to redouble their efforts in halting the devastating attacks on elephants. DfID is a major partner in this government initiative because, unlike the FCO and Defra, it has the mandate and resources to help control the ivory trade at its roots in the countries concerned. We have heard almost nothing of the trade at its source and the predominant methods of poaching. So I am a little disappointed, but I hope the Minister can reassure me that he will encourage colleagues to report back in a year’s time, not only on the effects of the Bill but on the valuable work that DfID will have done in the interim.

Ivory Bill

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 12th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 38 in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones and to speak to Amendments 59 and 60 in this group. Enforcement is a critical part of achieving the aims of the legislation and must not be neglected. This proposed new clause would require an assessment to be made and laid before Parliament on the level of resources allocated, or proposed to be allocated, to enforcement of the prohibition in ivory dealing. The Minister’s department must demonstrate determination to enforce the provisions of the Bill to underline its commitment.

As noble Lords will appreciate, enforcement is a resource-intensive undertaking. However, many of the agencies and authorities we expect to be involved with enforcement of the Bill are already struggling. Home Office statistics show that the number of police officers fell from 143,734 in March 2010 to 123,142 in March 2017. The CITES Border Force team has just 10 members, who carry out more than 1,000 seizures a year, each one generating months of work. The National Wildlife Crime Unit has only 12 members of staff, including administrative staff, to cover the entirety of its work across the UK. The team not only carries out investigations referred from the Border Force but works right across all the UK wildlife crime priority areas, which is a significant remit outside CITES and includes domestic wildlife, bats, badgers, and prosecutions relating to birds of prey, freshwater pearl mussels and poaching. All of these sit within the UK’s strategic priorities, and the work of the National Wildlife Crime Unit is split right across all these areas.

Ivory products are the most popular wildlife item on the international market, despite a global ban on ivory sales imposed by the 180-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. This legislation could therefore increase the Wildlife Crime Unit’s work exponentially. A strong commitment to future funding is vital if that important work is to continue. We have heard that the funding is committed until 2020 but, beyond that, the National Wildlife Crime Unit has had no formal indication that there will be continued funding, which clearly causes concern. It is unable to plan or commit to long-term strategies. It is very difficult for any agency to form business plans when, in 20 months’ time, it may not exist at all.

The APHA, an executive agency with an existing wide-ranging remit, will be responsible for administering and enforcing the registration and certification scheme. The Minister has previously confirmed that the APHA will be responsible for conducting spot checks on items registered, to check for accuracy and compliance, and will be working with the police and others to enable them to carry out any enforcement and monitoring action necessary. This is a key and very necessary part of the regulations, so it should be carried out by skilled members of staff trained to identify ivory. Has the Minister’s department carried out a budget and manpower review of the Bill’s implications for the APHA?

Finally, the Minister has advised that the regulator—the Office for Product Safety and Standards—will also play a role in enforcement. There was very little scrutiny in the other place of why this BEIS agency has been selected to oversee most of the enforcement of the Act under civil penalty provisions. Will the Minister explain why the OPSS has been chosen, given that the Ivory Act will form part of the global wildlife protection legislation that is administered by Defra? The OPSS has no expertise in wildlife regulation and there is concern that it will be preoccupied by its other work. Will the Minister assure the House that there will be sufficient funding for specially trained and dedicated staff at the OPSS to work on enforcing the ban on dealing with ivory?

Will the Minister also spell out how the OPSS will operate alongside the police, the CITES border force and the National Wildlife Crime Unit? How will the responsible areas be defined and split between the agencies when the regulator will be in another department? Will the Minister explain how the enforcement will be structured? I trust that the Government will commit to ensuring sufficient manpower and resources, otherwise the Bill will be toothless and treated merely as non-binding guidance, and the public will interpret from this that the Government are not committed to taking the measure seriously.

Amendments 59 and 60 call for a report on the impact of the Act on the ivory market. I may respond later to the remarks from the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. At this stage, I will comment only that Amendment 59 seems to focus more widely on the international market, whereas Amendment 60 in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones is focused on the domestic market—albeit that both call also for a report from DfID to be included explaining how the work of the department has contributed to the aims of the Bill.

In Committee in the House on Monday, the Government were conducive towards Amendment 35 on producing a report on exemptions to the ivory ban. They intended to share publicly information on how the ivory ban was working in practice. It seems logical to press the Government to go further and report more widely on the domestic ivory market as well and, by extension, include how the Department for International Development has worked with communities overseas that are on the front line in the battle against ivory poaching.

The proposed new clause in Amendment 60 provides for a practical analysis of the impact of the Bill in its ultimate purpose to reduce the illegal trade in ivory and to save the elephant from further slaughter. Importantly, the report should consider the impact on nations and communities that generate income from the trade, given that the Bill responds to calls from African nations that stand as one to demand an end to the market for ivory across the globe that fuels the drive for poaching. As we have argued throughout the passage of the Bill, reducing demand is the key tenet of a wider strategy. It will place the Bill alongside the activities of other nations to provide leadership on an international scale, which the Secretary of State can underline when he hosts the illegal wildlife conference in London in October. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, in speaking to Amendment 59. No one who listened to the Second Reading debate in another place can be in doubt of the Government’s determination to eliminate the criminal trade in ivory. This concerns at least three government departments. We have not yet heard from the international development side of the story and I have not so far spoken, but I will not delay the Bill by repeating what was said at Second Reading.

My primary interest is not in the ivory trade, although I sympathise with many of the concerns expressed, but in the communities where elephants and people live and how they will be affected—or assisted—by the Bill. Several MPs have tried to amend the Bill on their behalf and to widen it to include the protection of other endangered species, listed in CITES, such as rhinos and even tigers and snow leopards. I am not, however, going quite that far today. That is the subject of a later amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones.

People are saying different things on the Bill. In Committee, I have been struck by the occasional polarisation of opinion. For example, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said on Monday that she was protecting elephants, while the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and others were protecting inanimate objects. My noble friend Lord Berkeley said that some of the resources required in monitoring the ivory trade would surely be much better directed towards the problem itself—towards protecting elephants and prosecuting the criminals who try to make money out of ivory. I sympathise with him.

Ivory may not be seen with quite the same reverence at a local level in Africa or Asia. Elephants, on the other hand, especially those that still have their tusks and their teeth intact, are highly respected. There are some robust programmes targeting poachers and dealers, many of whom, as in any crime, are inevitably seeking a way out of poverty. When it comes to the need for human survival, desperation can easily lure people into crime, so poverty alleviation and sustainable development must always be partners of human and animal rights.

One must not be too pious about this. We have to be aware that corruption goes a lot higher than poachers and dealers. In some communities, the elephant is quite unromantic and can become the enemy of development. I have witnessed a dangerous bull elephant in South Africa—I expect a lot of people have. Anyone in Assam will remind you that elephants never forget and wreak terrible and regular vengeance.

DfID already focuses on alternative livelihoods as part of the UK campaign to end the ivory trade. I warmly welcome that. All too often, criminal activity is seen as an easy alternative to low pay and lack of opportunity. There are many organisations tackling this, such as the African Wildlife Foundation, which combines preventing trade in ivory with development projects in local communities. The AWF, for example, has a programme to bring wildlife criminals to justice through the training of rangers and prosecutors. It has had much success with sniffer dogs at Nairobi and Entebbe airports. In the same region, the charity Save the Elephants has recruited Turkana and Samburu women to help to track elephants in its campaign to stop poaching.

The World Wide Fund for Nature has a worldwide scheme to support rangers who carry out essential protection of endangered species, directly benefiting local families as well as elephants. It is monitoring herds, training community rangers and protecting habitats. In safeguarding elephants, it is also helping to support local communities through measures to reduce human-elephant conflict and initiatives to support local livelihoods.

I recognise that the Government have made extensive preparations for the IWT conference next month, but DfID, since it works overseas, always appears to be a junior ministry in these joined-up initiatives. I have looked at its website in relation to elephants. Inevitably, there will be a lot of variety in different countries’ responses to the illegal trade and the conference will doubtless show that there is no simple development formula. This affects how you assess the effect of these programmes. There is no simple development formula beyond the rule of law but, knowing DfID’s investment in the programme, it would be reasonable to ask for some impact assessment.

All that I am seeking with this amendment is a recognition of the work of DfID and its in-country partners through an annual report that makes some assessment of success in both protection and development alongside trade bans. The Government have given huge sums to this and launched impressive targets, but it is important for us to judge how effective these targets are going to be and how they will benefit local people.

There was a degree of euphoria in another place during discussion of the Bill. The ivory campaign inevitably has widespread support on all sides. Nevertheless, we must be aware that, while we can and must reduce the international trade in ivory, the real problems are not taking place on this island and we need a formal assessment of the impact on the people most directly affected. I thank the Opposition Front Bench for presenting a comparable amendment and I hope that we can carry this through to later stages of the Bill.

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

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and his committee have given the country an honest picture of the sorry prospects for agriculture in relation to Brexit. We have heard some splendid contributions. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Vaux on his very pertinent speech.

My interest in the register refers to income that our small west Dorset estate receives from the EU, chiefly under environmental stewardship schemes. I am also well aware of the plight of small and marginal farmers in the West Country, some of whom are our friends and neighbours.

The NFU reminds us that,

“farming is the bedrock of our largest manufacturing sector, food and drink processing. This is worth £108 billion per annum and employs 3.9 million people”.

Our whole nation owes a debt to farmers and farmworkers for our food supply and the care of our environment. Generation after generation of farmers have looked after these two essential elements in our lives: what we eat and the countryside we enjoy. And yet we are allowing the most vulnerable to go slowly down into the mud.

This must not go on. As the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, has already mentioned, we are already losing small farms day after day. One-third of all holdings under 20 were lost in just one decade, 2005-15, according to the CPRE quoting Defra. With Brexit looming, the prospects are not very bright.

The sort of vision laid out recently by Neil Parish MP in his CLA interview concerns me, because he should know. He mentions that struggling farmers and tenants on marginal land are expected to be the casualties of any future system, but he offers little comfort to them. He talks instead of,

“bigger ... and more competitive farms”,

in the future and sees competitive farming moving,

“towards more of a grant-based system”.

Payments, he says, must go to those who are “actually farming”.

The sub-committee wants the Government to clarify their intentions as soon as possible, as any reductions will have a significant impact on agriculture, as everybody has made clear. Equally, it says, farmers themselves will have to make a strong case and perhaps lobby Parliament to maintain support at the same, or similar, levels beyond the end of this Parliament.

One key point in the report was made by the First Minister of Wales, who said in evidence that the loss of subsidies would,

“put our producers at a competitive disadvantage”,

compared to other member states unless similar levels of support are put in by the Government. This is such an obvious fact that it stares us in the face and demands an answer.

The report also warns that leaving the EU will create,

“significant uncertainty for the … agri-food sector”.

If UK and EU standards begin to differ after Brexit, there is a risk for producers of substantial non-tariff barriers being in their way.

The section on movement of goods in the new customs White Paper conjures up the prospect of huge inland customs offices behind every port, with all the attendant queues and delays. How do the Government think that this could ever be an improvement on today’s traffic to and from the EU? How will farmers and food exporters be affected by the transition to WTO requirements? It seems, from all accounts, adversely.

In their response to the report, the Government admit that EU tariffs in the agriculture sector are higher and more complex than in other sectors and say that they are,

“carefully assessing the potential impact”.

Well, they should hurry. There is not much time.

The NFU has long grappled with the issue of better regulation. This is not an easy subject when you think of those complicated IACS forms and their successors. How can farmers or anyone expect to receive grants without completing these massive documents? Whatever the outcome of Brexit, I cannot see this as an EU problem; it is a UK disease just as much, so let us try to cure ourselves of it. We will all agree with Neil Parish that we want something that delivers payments on time and does not get messed up by computers. The NFU states that,

“farmers have had their fair experience of bad regulation and the NFU has … long campaigned for reform. This does not reflect an opposition to regulation per se, but rather a desire to see the details of design and implementation improved”.

Delays in Defra, hearings and appeals are another thing: I have myself waited two years and still have no reply. Then there are all the EU directives on clean water, nitrates, crop protection, animal welfare and so on. Are we going to reinvent all these? How will we trade with Europe if we are not aware of the latest standards of health and hygiene? Do our EU committees continue to monitor legislation, or will they be disbanded? These are serious questions and the exasperating fact is that this Government are still not in a position to answer them.

The latest “no deal” drama, designed perhaps to hurry the negotiations, is going to postpone these decisions even longer. In the end, surely we will have to accommodate the EU in roughly the way we do already, or else find ourselves on the end of fines and litigation. If an amendment to the Bill brings us back to the drawing board, I shall not be sorry.

Finally, on migration, which has been mentioned by many speakers, it seems obvious that many farmers and market gardeners who depend on seasonal migrant labour will find it impossible to carry on after Brexit—my noble and learned friend and others have mentioned this. The Government say in their response that they have announced their intention,

“to commission advice from the Migration Advisory Committee to better understand the reliance on EU migrant workers across the economy”.

As the report says:

“The entire food supply chain will be adversely affected”.


When will the MAC give this advice? Do we not know enough already to realise that these seasonal workers from Europe are either not going to come at all, or they are going in due course to be denied visas and deprived of any services normally due to them? They will go underground or disappear into the black market, and who is going to cope with that: accident and emergency?

Farming: Impact of Brexit

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on achieving a second debate so soon. Her career in another place included five years as chair of the EFRA Select Committee. I also remember her interest in Africa.

I live in west Dorset, where my wife and I manage a small agricultural estate, and have done for 30 years, depending on CAP direct and environmental payments. We are surrounded by farming families who have been on the same land for generations and who look at the new political landscape with great misgivings. As we have heard, everyone longs for the uncertainty to end.

I voted to stay in the EU and I believe that many leavers, including farmers where I live, voted out without fully realising the consequences. Many families were divided, but the majority were leavers. Generally, I think there has been considerable dismay among farmers since Brexit simply because of the threat to their farm payments. The new Secretary of State will have to persuade the Chancellor that smaller farmers and hill farmers will not be able to carry on unless they are given stronger reassurances of support. Owen Paterson said at the recent Oxford Farming Conference that,

“a sovereign UK Government, no longer constrained by EU rules, could actually increase rural payments”.

Leavers have argued that the UK should now be free to make its own trading arrangements with the EU and other countries that require our exports. Canada and Australia are often mentioned, even though they are themselves food exporters and will obviously gain from free trade agreements.

Red tape has just been mentioned. Leavers say, with some reason, that we will be able to remove unnecessary regulations while keeping those deemed necessary to maintain standards. On labour regulation, we will fall back on the seasonal agricultural workers scheme, although, as the noble Baroness mentioned, that has its own problems. Even Commissioner Phil Hogan claimed at Oxford that EU rules were too complicated and that he wanted to cut red tape or “reduce administrative burdens”, as the EU put it. But he also argued that the CAP had provided stability and was the foundation for economic growth and jobs in rural areas. The UK, like Norway and Switzerland, would have to renegotiate its relations with the EU, but it would still be bound by a large percentage of EU law without having any representation in negotiations or votes in the European Parliament.

What is clear is that this situation is unprecedented: the EU has never negotiated an exit agreement with one of its members before. The size of the UK market—62% of our total agrifood exports and 70% of our imports—requires a unique, new agreement to satisfy both sides.

In 2013, farmers received €2.6 billion under Pillar 1 and €637 million for agri-environment and rural development under “green” Pillar 2. How will HMG ensure that British farmers continue to receive these payments? We have already heard that they may not. There are fears that direct payments will be significantly less under the new Government because of the continuing need for austerity. Perhaps the Minister will clarify that. He may not know the answer yet but he will know that farmers will have to receive this level of support or the whole fabric of rural society and the countryside will collapse—we heard of the situation in Wales. The Minister could at least say that the Government will know the answer when we return in September or within a few months.

Another major worry I have picked up from the NFU in Dorset is about disease control. Now that the UK is leaving the EU, farmers fear that trade barriers will be put up against TB, which remains a scourge of West Country farmers. While the jury may still be out, farmers directly affected will want a much tougher line from this Government.

The fluctuating milk price is a continual source of grievance, and there is wide disparity between farmers supplying milk to supermarkets at 30p a pint, or close to it, and others sending milk to companies like Arla for processed milk products with a price for ever in the low 20s. This is the result of oversupply worldwide and I will not go into it now. The EU has helped with emergency payments, but can we assume that this Government, outside the EU, will do any better? I am grateful to the CLA for providing us with these facts and figures, and also to the NFU in Dorset for its advice to me.

Incidentally, forestry is always ignored. It has been mentioned once today. Could the Minister give us some more reassurance on that?

Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich]

Having played a very small part in the early stages of the Bill, I want to congratulate the Government on listening. I am not in agreement with the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles. He knows that. I have listened to many NGOs in the farming community and I think he underestimates the feeling out there. It is important that the adjudicator is able to hear from anyone now. It is important that they can initiate investigations based on their own assessment as to whether there has been a breach, and it is also important they have a full set of tools to be able to change retailers’ behaviour. Retailers can be fined and required to take out a newspaper advertisement saying they breached the code. The GCA can provide clarification on how to interpret the code and can recommend changes in its scope. That is roughly the gist of it. I concur with the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that the Commons amendments have been just what was wanted.

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions, particularly the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, although I warn the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that he should manage his expectations for the future.

The issue of whether to give the adjudicator the power to impose fines from the outset has always been, as I have said, a finely balanced policy decision. The BIS Select Committee acknowledged this in its 2011 report. We continue to believe that the sanction of requiring a retailer to publish information—the so-called name and shame—will be a powerful one and will suffice in the great majority of breaches. However, the Government have listened carefully to the arguments made in your Lordships’ House, at Second Reading in another place and by third parties that the ability to fine from the outset would help to give the adjudicator more teeth.

Turning to the questions raised by noble Lords, my noble friend Lord Eccles effectively asked why we need an adjudicator at all. He may not have said it in those words but that was the gist of it. I accept that he feels very strongly about this and he has argued his point eloquently here, as he has at previous stages in the passage of the Bill. I hope he will accept that the weight of opinion in both Houses, as well as that of the Competition Commission and the BIS Select Committee, is strongly in favour of the establishment of an adjudicator.

We recognise that supermarkets are a vital part of our economy and that they do much good through increased employment, consumer choice and their own commitment to corporate social responsibility. We also recognise that the groceries sector is generally very competitive.

My noble friend talked a bit about the suggestion that there is a climate of fear. Currently, complaints must be made to the supermarket involved and, given the purported climate of fear to which he refers and which has been indentified among suppliers, this could indeed limit complaints. Very few suppliers would be willing to challenge a retailer on which they are likely to be highly financially dependent. An independent adjudicator to whom suppliers can complain confidentially is therefore essential to enforcing the code.

He asked about how it could help farmers. The adjudicator has a very tightly defined remit. She will enforce the Groceries Supply Code of Practice based strictly on the Competition Commission’s findings that retailers were transferring excessive risk to their direct suppliers. She will therefore not be able to set prices for produce. Similarly, issues arising between farmers and processors will be out of scope. She can only consider interactions between retailers and their direct suppliers. It is important to note that most farmers are not direct suppliers to retailers. Most farm produce tends to be sold to wholesalers, processors or other intermediaries. However, we are confident that by reducing the pressure on direct suppliers the adjudicator will allow them to make longer-term decisions and to increase innovation and investment, which will benefit the entire supply chain including farmers.

My noble friend was also naturally concerned about the prices paid by shoppers when they go to supermarkets, and he said that he would not wish to see the adjudicator’s work leading to increased costs for hard-pressed consumers. I reassure him that the retailers themselves, when giving evidence to the BIS Select Committee, said that the cost of compliance with the code had not led them to raise the prices paid by consumers. Ultimately, this is a pro-consumer measure. The Competition Commission’s 2008 report clearly identified that the supermarket practices that the adjudicator will confront could have a detrimental effect on consumers if left unchecked.

The noble Lord, Lord Myners, raised a question about the financial sector. It was an interesting point, if I may say so. I have a feeling that the financial ombudsman has an important role to play, and I am sure that the noble Lord will make his point again on a perhaps more relevant occasion.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, essentially raised the issue of a living code. If the adjudicator considers that the code should be changed, then he or she is required by the Bill to make a recommendation to that effect to the Office of Fair Trading. It should be emphasised that this is a narrow duty on the part of the adjudicator. Under the existing provisions of the Enterprise Act, it would then be for the OFT to decide whether to advise the Competition Commission that a variation of the code was appropriate by reason of a change of circumstances. However, these provisions allow for the code to be adapted to changing circumstances in the groceries market to ensure that suppliers are treated fairly.

I hope that that addresses most of the issues raised and I recommend these amendments.

Agriculture: Global Food Security

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich]

My Lords, it may be appropriate for a Sandwich to follow both chicken and egg. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, who is as conscientious now as she was in opposition in bringing these issues forward. My name may be for ever associated with fast food, and I have to declare an interest in both agriculture and the food industry, but, as the noble Baroness knows, today I shall concentrate on world food issues.

Most of us are fortunate to live in rural Britain and not in parts of the world where people are starving. Yet, the noble Baroness has already described the shrinking production and income, and the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, has said that farming is out of balance. Farmers in the West Country near to where I live face severe droughts this week, in spite of the rainfall, while being urged to maintain or increase production for the benefit of mankind.

Feeding the hungry also costs lives. Across the world in southern Sudan, three weeks ago a senior programme assistant of the World Food Programme was killed in an ambush when his vehicle was attacked. He leaves behind a wife and two children. Every year, dozens of aid workers and their drivers are killed, and hundreds of lorries are hijacked or destroyed. That is the price of bringing food to the hungry during conflict, and perhaps it should be costed as part of the waste of food in the world.

Sudan is the World Food Programme’s largest mission. It brings food to up to 6 million people, including those on the front line in Darfur, Abyei and several other areas of conflict. In the south, it is currently providing food assistance to 1.5 million people, including returnees to the south and communities recovering from decades of instability and conflict.

Another 5 million are awaiting food in the Horn of Africa this year, but here the story is a little better. Following the drought in east Africa two years ago, there were areas of surplus in Kenya, Uganda and even Ethiopia last year, and the WFP was able to buy grain from all three countries at a value of $139 million. Therefore, with Zimbabwe still out of the grain market, it is a relief to see surpluses coming from Africa, especially east Africa.

I was in northern Ethiopia in March and, although I saw ox-ploughs and drills in action on semi-arid land, there is now concern that the current long rains are below normal. In some areas, the maize price is going up from 25 to 120 per cent, and cereal prices may increase by 40 to 50 per cent, compounded by rising fuel prices.

The Foresight report is an authoritative document and benefits from the wisdom of both farming and international development experts being brought together—people such as Dr Camilla Toulmin, who has vast experience of the environment and development. The report says that our present system is unsustainable, and the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, has already described the need for sustainable intensification. On a global level, we have more than 900 million hungry people to feed out of a total population of 7 billion, and that may reach 9 billion by 2050. Incidentally, considering that it is the lunch hour, it is worth mentioning that perhaps 1 billion people overeat and that the problem of obesity should also be addressed.

I was glad to read in the CLA briefing for today that its emphasis is on maintaining, not increasing, productivity. We all remember the rush to use those embarrassing subsidised grain surpluses incurred at that time, with the farmers’ Send a Tonne to Africa campaign, and a well known Cambridgeshire farmer actually following his surpluses out to Eritrea. In the 1970s, when I first joined Christian Aid, aid agencies were still paying for Land Rovers full of grain to cross the desert to reach the starving.

Now, the crisis seems further away. The surpluses have gone and we speak in more measured tones about the need to sustain and broaden our own agriculture and support the “greening” of the CAP. However, there is no less urgency to feed the world. It is the language that has changed and the questions now, both here and in developing countries, are all about inputs, GM crops, biofuels, more applied research and the careful handling of natural resources.

On GM and fertilisers, like the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, I still have misgivings about the concept of the highly irrigated green revolution because of the amount of irrigation and inputs that it requires and the social divisions it can cause. It is all right for the Punjab but not for most of the Deccan, for example, and I doubt whether it would pass the stringent tests of the Foresight report in terms of carbon emissions. As the noble Baroness said, there are many available alternatives and dry-land farming is now a highly developed and respectable science which benefits from research right across Africa and India. I am not a biofuels enthusiast either because of the amount of land and forest they consume in countries such as Brazil where the sugar industry is based literally on the backs of forced migrant labour. I hope that Africa does not follow Brazil down that route.

I notice in looking at the DfID website that while climate and environment is one of the emerging policy areas, agriculture is not. It seems that the first millennium development goal, eradicating poverty and hunger, will not be met in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. Investment in agriculture in Africa, which also means infrastructure—especially rural roads and bringing more land into production—has been long neglected and is still at a very low level. I was encouraged by the conclusion in the Foresight report that there was a lot of potential in Africa and that investment is recovering. However, DfID estimates that with a 2 degree increase in temperature, up to 400 million could be at risk of hunger and up to 2 billion could be short of water. I suspect that these are not new numbers. Most of these people are already included in the world’s hungry. Perhaps these alarming figures will be a catalyst to getting more investment in water conservation and rain-fed agriculture.

A lot of sensible, practical agriculture, of the kind already undertaken out of necessity by the poorest communities, can be done under the heading of climate change. It is the same old story under a new environmental label. To take, for instance, Ethiopia, in much of sub-Saharan Africa and the arid central belt in India, stone walls, terracing and tree-planting are essential, and have been for many years, to prevent erosion and deforestation. DfID says that it is climate-proofing all its aid programmes, and this is also the EU Commission’s policy. The same is true of the CAP. We are relabelling farming as sustainable agriculture and attempting to move further away from outright productivity. It is difficult and the Minister will agree that we are in a dilemma here. We are entering discussion on the EU financial framework from 2014 and there is very little room for manoeuvre. Will the Government, as our EU Committee has recommended, move away from direct and environmental payments towards rural development and a more flexible farm policy in Pillar 2? That means adjustment which will not necessarily go down well with our own farmers.

Finally, the Minister will remember my interest in the Government’s decision to establish a groceries adjudicator, and many voices have been heard in support today. If the office is now established, there will be a lot of staff in proportion to the interest that has been expressed.

Agriculture: Regulation

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich]

I declare an interest as an owner and joint manager of farmland in West Dorset.

Two out of three farmers complained to the NFU last year that red tape was their greatest concern—greater than prices or the economy or the CAP. Defra admitted that the cost of its regulations had reached £458 million, with the greatest impact on farmers. The good news is that common sense seems to have arrived, and the new Minister, Jim Paice, believes that more trust should be vested in farmers, because they know which practices work best and which do not—and he is one.

I am amazed at the stamina that farmers and owners have displayed in coping with so many rules. The culture of political correctness has to change, and I am sure that the Minister will set that out in his reply. We need a new official attitude that states that if we do not need it, we do not want it. Rules intended as improvements have become burdens. With our economy under pressure we cannot afford the luxury of unthinking legislation. There must be no gold-plating of EU rules, especially when it is known that other member states do not comply, as the noble Baroness said.

Does the Minister agree with the NFU that the impact assessments, while they may include a section on rural proofing, are,

“too often ignored or not considered fully”?

I support the Commission’s new proposals on the progressive greening of the CAP and more sustainable agriculture, but I am also concerned about the duplication among the various environmental agencies. We have small tracts of woodland and pasture, including SSSIs, that involve at least four agencies: Natural England, the Countryside Agency, the Forestry Commission and Defra. Can the Minister assure us that designations need not involve so much bureaucracy in future?

Finally, I turn to badgers. Here I can draw directly on our experience in West Dorset. When are we going to follow the Welsh—subject to the court case—and issue farmers with licences for four-year culls in definable areas of the south-west? I know that this is not without problems. They have been outlined in an excellent Commons briefing paper.

Furthermore, can Defra further simplify the bovine TB testing procedure? One farmer whom I know complains that Defra is not collecting animals fast enough, perhaps because of the shortage of vets. The noble Baroness has already mentioned a review of the movements of the animals. Once they are tested positive, too much time elapses, they are kept in isolation longer than necessary and the risk on the farm remains. On top of that, under the 60-day test, four more months of quarantine mean that animals still have to be fed and there can be no sales.

Is the Minister aware that the testing rules are applied differently from county to county? For instance, in Devon, tested animals with the correct ear tags and showing fitness to travel are collected faster because they do not require an inspection, so much more must be done online, and this of course is the most welcome form of deregulation.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[The Earl of Sandwich]

85A: Clause 5, page 3, line 11, at end insert—
“( ) An order under this section may modify the functions of the Office of Fair Trading (“OFT”) by—
(a) conferring the function of Groceries Code Adjudicator upon the OFT; and(b) transferring that function to another person.( ) In this section, the function of “Groceries Code Adjudicator” is to enforce the Groceries Supply Code of Practice as specified in the Groceries (Supply Chain Practices) Market Investigation Order 2009.”

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Sandwich]

My Lords, I can promise the Minister that we will move more swiftly on this amendment, which obviously has a much lower standing in the House. In moving Amendment 85A, I shall speak also to Amendments 174A and 174B in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield, although I welcome the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter to this debate. I look forward very much to their contributions.

This is intended to be a helpful amendment, which is the first concerning the Office of Fair Trading in Clause 5 and Schedules 5 and 7, which I will come to later. It could be said to be a Cross-Bench amendment, since the proposal already has the approva1 of all political parties. It is simply a question of when and how the Government intend to act on this matter.

The background is as follows—I will be as brief as I can. A decade ago, in 2001, following a report by the Competition Commission, the four largest supermarkets signed up to a voluntary supermarket code of practice designed to encourage smaller suppliers and growers to enter the groceries market and to remove some of the obstacles in their way. However, those suppliers were unwilling to make formal complaints because of their effect on their relationship with the supermarkets and there was no means of enforcing the code. The Competition Commission was therefore asked to investigate further and, as a result of its report published in April 2008, the code of practice was updated last year as the groceries supply code of practice. All three political parties agreed to appoint an ombudsman, the groceries code adjudicator, as he is known, to monitor and enforce the revised code.

The new body, although independent of the Office of Fair Trading, is due to be housed within the OFT. Some confusion as to how this can be achieved if the Office of Fair Trading is to be abolished has already been expressed. I understand that functions of the Competition Commission and the OFT are to be merged. This has been confirmed to me by the Consumer Minister, Edward Davey, in a letter of reassurance. When he announced the Government’s decision to go ahead with the legislation last August, he said:

“We want to make sure that large retailers can’t abuse their power by transferring excessive risks or unexpected costs onto their suppliers. These sorts of pressures are bad for producers and bad for consumers—ultimately they can lead to lower quality goods, less choice and less innovation”.

So it is clear that the Minister’s heart is in the right place.

This is precisely why so many people would like the Government to go ahead immediately with the legislation. It has the backing of many organisations, which I shall not name today. It is also in line with the Conservatives’ new philosophy of stronger trading links with other countries. The reason for my interest in this is that I have for more than 30 years supported the efforts of charities and others concerned with fair trade, whether with developing countries or with smaller producers and farmers in this country. I also speak as someone who was involved in a small business in a rural community.

Why cannot the Government move a little faster on this? Is there some hesitation because of the power of supermarkets, which of course will have to provide the funding for the new office? The British Retail Consortium has consistently opposed the idea, but I remind the Minister that three major supermarkets, Marks & Spencer, Aldi and Waitrose, have now accepted that there will have to be a degree of monitoring and enforcement. Another cause for delay, as I have mentioned, may be the siting of the new office within an organisation that is being dismantled.

It is more than a year since the new code of practice came into force; it did so on Thursday 4 February 2010. I realise that this amendment is not the appropriate vehicle for this important proposal, but it carries a message from a wide section of the business and farming community. I therefore suggest that today would be the right time for the Government to give an early indication of the timing of this legislation and, better still, to accept these amendments, which would establish a groceries code adjudicator. I beg to move.

[The Lord Bishop of Exeter]

My Lords, I am pleased to speak to this group of amendments. I do so in the absence of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield, who regrets being unable to be in his place today. Five years ago, after a debate in the General Synod of the Church of England in which wide-ranging concerns were raised about the problems being experienced by farmers as a result of the buying practices of supermarkets, the church’s Ethical Investment Advisory Group agreed to investigate. In 2007, it produced the report Fairtrade Begins at Home: Supermarkets and the Effect on British Farming Livelihoods. I declare an interest because I wrote the foreword.

The report identified damaging practices around labelling, promotions, payments and contracts as well as other areas of dysfunctionality within the market. It carefully documented the harm inflicted on farmers and agricultural businesses by supermarkets’ buying practices. Pressure on price was identified as a particular problem in the UK dairy industry, an issue that is still of primary importance today, with the cost of production of a wide range of agricultural and horticultural products remaining significantly above the price received.

The report was submitted as evidence to the Competition Commission inquiry on the operation of the groceries market and the EIAG called on the Competition Commission to mandate the creation of an ombudsman—the case for that appointment has continued to be made—while at the same time pressing the Government, the Opposition and supermarkets to address the wide range of issues raised in our report.

Since 2007, there has been continued and systematic engagement with the major supermarkets in an attempt to encourage better practice and a more imaginative response to proposed regulation. There have been some improvements, such as supermarkets paying a premium for milk, working collaboratively to improve the efficiency of farmers in the supply chain and developing local sourcing initiatives for small suppliers. However, there is much evidence that serious problems remain, with examples of barriers to new products coming to market, or to scaling up supply, such as prohibitive payments for listing. Squeezes on the profitability and viability of primary producers, who find it hard to get fair prices, remain a recurrent complaint. This is particularly relevant for the dairy sector, beef production and pigs—both pork and bacon—where the price paid is often below the cost of production.

When the Government announced in August 2010 that it would establish a new groceries complaints adjudicator, an ombudsman, in the Office of Fair Trading, to adjudicate complaints from suppliers of breaches by supermarkets of the new groceries supply code of practice, many in agriculture and the food supply industry were encouraged to hope. That hope was further strengthened when we were further told by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills that a draft Bill would be published later in 2010; that the Bill would be introduced in the second Session of Parliament; and that it would have teeth, including allowing for the possibility of introducing financial penalties if the naming and shaming of supermarkets was not working.

As the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, has said, we are still waiting for action. The groceries supply code of practice has been in force since February 2010 and there is still no enforcement mechanism for it. Contrary to the intentions announced last August, no Bill has yet been published to establish the GCA nor has parliamentary time this Session been allocated. The issue is slipping. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, will recall that when I asked a question about this on 7 February, he replied that,

“there is a good chance that it”—

a Bill to establish the GCA—

“will start in another place first some time this Session, but I cannot give any precise timing at this stage”.—[Official Report, 7/2/11; col. 4.]

I am aware that the Consumer Minister has since announced plans to release a draft Bill on the groceries complaints adjudicator before the Easter Recess begins on 6 April, yet it remains a fact that difficulties in the groceries supply chain, which were identified more than a decade ago, are still waiting to be addressed as a matter of urgency. These amendments offer an opportunity for the Government to commit themselves to action and to put real flesh on the bones of their promises and to do so now.

I fully expect the Minister to resist these amendments but, should he do so, I hope that at the same time he will be able to give very clearly to this House further details of the nature and scope of the legislation that the Government have in mind and a clear statement of the timescale to bring such legislation into practice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

Some of us who have been here for some time remember the late Lord Airedale, who annually moved a Bill—my noble friend Lord Carrington will remember this—trying to fix the time of Easter. I accept what the right reverend Prelate has said about it being very late this year, but that will mean it will be even easier for my colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to get that draft right and get it on time. It will then be published, as I said, around Easter—the latest possible Easter. It will be introduced and debated in Parliament—again, this is all I can say—as soon as parliamentary time allows. There are certain things that Ministers discuss with some trepidation and one is the timing of parliamentary business without discussing it with the usual channels. Certainly, I would not want to make any commitment as to when that will be but as soon as time allows we will bring that forward. We will also be able to then consider a point that the right reverend Prelate made about what sort of teeth the groceries code adjudicator should have—whether it is just naming and shaming or whether naming and shaming might not be enough and whether one should move on to greater powers. I think that is something for Parliament to consider in due course.

I want briefly to comment on where the groceries code adjudicator will live on his creation. Again I cannot take the Committee much further than that, but we are considering all the options. We will set out our intentions on where he or she should be and that will be available when we publish the draft Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny around Easter.

I appreciate that the assurances—particularly in terms of time—have moved on somewhat from earlier occasions, but I hope that with those assurances the noble Earl will feel able to withdraw his amendment. I am certainly very grateful for having had the opportunity to offer those assurances to him on this occasion.

[The Earl of Sandwich]

My Lords, I detect that the House will not want to dwell long on this amendment but I will just take a minute or two to respond. It has already been said several times that there is some confusion about the location of the adjudicator. Although I am grateful to the Minister for his clarification, it does sound a little like musical chairs, so we shall see who sits where.

I am also grateful for the contributions of other speakers: the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, referred to the political consensus and that is important. My noble friend Lord Cameron reminded us of the precarious relationship between farmers and supermarkets at this time. The NFU, the CLA, the CPRE and others are all behind this idea because it is urgent. The fundamental point is that the legislation is needed now. A 2009 survey by Traidcraft showed that eight in 10 shoppers want a watchdog to monitor and penalise supermarkets which treat suppliers unfairly. They believe that an adjudicator would mark a step change in helping reassure consumers that all the goods they buy do not come at the expense of bullying tactics by retailers towards suppliers and provide a proper context where the working conditions for farmers and workers can improve.

I thank the Government for their commitment, or their recommitment, to the adjudicator and for the noble Lord’s promise of a draft Bill around Easter. I beg leave to withdraw this amendment.

Amendment 85A withdrawn.