Agriculture Bill
Debate between John Hayes and Neil ParishMonday 3rd February 2020
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
I will try be quick as there are maiden speeches to be made.
I welcome the Bill, and I urge the Opposition to vote for Second Reading and then to try to amend it in Committee and on Report, because the amendments I tabled in the last Parliament, which the shadow Secretary of State mentioned, I might well reintroduce at a later stage. Now is the time to let the Bill through, which I welcome as an historic moment.
We want long-term certainty, as we move forward, so I am pleased that the Bill now includes a reference to multi-annual financial assistance plans, but while the Government lay out clearly how they are to phase out direct payments, which is wonderful, they are not so clear about how the ELMS and other payments will kick in. I look forward to some proper pilots. I know that some have been done, but they were started and then stopped and delayed by the problems in the last Parliament. We must have practical schemes in place as we replace the basic farm payment, and if we have trouble rolling out the ELMS quickly enough, we should reconsider the level of basic farm payment paid in the interim, because we must make sure that the money gets to farmers and the agriculture community.
The EFRA Committee looked at the role of the Rural Payments Agency in overseeing and enforcing fair deal obligations for businesses and purchasers of agricultural produce. I am keen to see how the RPA will work with the Groceries Code Adjudicator and hold processors to account—for instance, in the beef or lamb sector, if a processor is not paying the right price for the carcase, will we be able to hold them to account? Will the RPA be able to fine them? If we are to make them change their practices, we have to get in there and make it work. As I have said, I am keen to hear how the RPA and the Groceries Code Adjudicator will work together.
On food standards, the point has been made across the House that we produce some of the best—if not the best—food in the world to high environmental and animal welfare standards. We cannot allow in food that does not meet those high standards, so I look forward to things coming forward in Committee and on Report. As we design our new policy for enhancing our environment—planting trees, stopping flooding, and so on—we must also seek to enhance the way we grow our food. Agritech will be important in helping to reduce our use of sprays and fertilizers while also producing a great deal of food.
There are more than 7 billion people in the world today and there will probably be some 8.6 billion by 2030. Seeking to enhance our environment and manage our land differently is very moral from an environmental point of view, but feeding the population of the world is also a moral issue, so as we import food let us be careful that we are not importing the water to grow it and taking food from those who can least afford it. Also, if, as we enhance our environment and plant more trees, we reduce our food production, where will much of that food come from? It will come from Brazil. I have been to Brazil, as have many others, and seen them ploughing up the savannah and driving their cattle towards the rain forest. They are destroying much of their environment in order to produce food. I am sure that hon. Members can see my point. Let us be careful to keep that production in this country.
Furthermore, we rightly make much of holding carbon in the soil and planting more trees, but we sometimes lose sight of the importance of the carbon that is locked in our permanent pasture, in the grassland and in the hills. We must maintain the level of production in this country, especially from grazing livestock, in part because it is produced to high welfare and environmental standards.
Sir John Hayes
We should be proud of the efficiency and productivity of our farmers. In this debate about the environment, much of which I respect and agree with, we must not lose sight of the effectiveness and efficiency that has made our farmers leaders across the world.
Neil Parish
My right hon. Friend is right, and I am looking forward to seeing that in the Bill. As we leave the CAP and develop our own agriculture policy, we will have an opportunity not only to enhance the environment, increase biodiversity, plant more trees, and so on, but to look at the efficiency of our production and livestock breeding—for example, by introducing native breeds and cross breeding in order to deliver that very high quality. On crop production, let us use genome technology and everything that is there so that we can produce lots of food.
It is also important, as we look to managing our landscape in the future, that we seek to enhance our hedgerows and field margins, but we must ensure good production where we have very good fertile land. One thing that worries me about our policies going forward is that it is very much at the high end of food production, and that is great, but much of the population also like to enjoy good-quality chicken meat that is produced intensively but is also very reasonably priced. We produce intensively reared chicken in this country according to very high standards, and I do not want us to phase out production in this country and then import that type of meat from other countries where it is produced much more intensively. Likewise with cereals: we must make sure that the types of crop protection used to produce cereals that we import are also available to our farmers. If we do not, all we will do is export our livestock and our poultry and pig production.
This is an important Bill, and it contains much that is to be recommended. However, we must be careful to ensure that as we enhance the environment and our biodiversity we also increase production. We have an opportunity now to produce more food in this country and to be more self-sufficient.