Agriculture Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

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

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

I beg your pardon: they were worth waiting for. The next speaker will therefore be the noble Lord, Lord Addington.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the access part of the Bill immediately caught my eye in terms of improving people’s health and enjoyment of the countryside. “Enjoyment” may be a term that is challenged, but it surely includes healthy exercise in the country, in a controlled environment with support. The amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, is not necessary, because I was assuming it was a voluntary interaction to get support; you get some funding to do support in a constructive, sensible way. I understand why he tabled it, because it is a useful piece of clarification, and we probe in Committee but clarify on Report. Hopefully, it will remove some of the, shall we say, more lurid stories we had over the summer—a quiet summer with the press.

I discovered on certain occasions that I was in favour of an unlimited right to roam over everybody’s gardens. It started with the BBC and carried on. I have to give praise to the Telegraph, which did not put anything like this out, possibly because it spoke to me first.

Anyway, as we go through this, the amendments I have down in my name are all about clarifying and, when they make reference to existing Acts of Parliament, trying to put this in context. I refer to the 2000 Act and the 1980 Act: we have something solid, so let us pin it down and find out what we are trying to do.

In the current environment, one thing we have discovered is that if your heart and cardiovascular system are in good condition, you are less likely to be a vulnerable person who is collapsing the NHS. Exercise is the wonder drug, and the best introduction to exercise if you are away from it is walking, after which you may start running or anything else. Taking exercise easily in a pleasant way is the thinking behind most of my approach. It is a pleasant experience to be outside walking.

My amendments also make it possible that the Government will fund those people who have entered into this to make sure or attempt to make sure there are paths that are useful for just about anybody, not just the convinced rambler who, armed with the right clothing and heavy boots, marches across a muddy field. They are for the person in a wheelchair or pushing a wheelchair or pushing a buggy. Can they get support to make sure that they have a hard surface that does not turn to mud at the first drop of rain? That was some of the thinking behind linking this to other Acts.

Farmers should get to it. This is very important for the simple reason that people stick to a hard path, by and large, but not to many other paths, including great paths such as the Pennine Way and the Ridgeway that get muddy. People avoid the mud and expand the path. Any biodiversity around that path is immediately destroyed by people’s size 6 and up shoes. It ruins the ground and the diversity. So the aim of my amendments that refer to other Acts is to try and make sure you can maintain a path that is usable under most circumstances.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has already addressed the Green group’s support for a number of amendments in this group. I will not repeat that, but I will address a number to which I have attached my name, starting with Amendment 8, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, which focuses on the whole-farm agroecological and agroforestry systems. I thank him for tabling it, and the noble Earls, Lord Dundee and Lord Caithness, for supporting it.

It is clear that the age of industrial monoculture has given us the dreadful condition of our countryside that the noble Earl addressed in his speech. Its waters are polluted and its soil degraded, and biodiversity is in collapse. Yet, at the same time, we have a public with an awful diet and poor health. We need a whole new approach. Actually, agroecological farming is the only kind of farming we should see, with whole-farm systems. Agroforestry is a crucial part of that: trees sheltering animals, holding water, storing carbon, supporting biodiversity, and producing healthier food, including fruits and nuts, and healthier and more varied fodder for livestock. We need the Government to support this transformation, although ultimately that needs to be how all our land is managed.

We have already seen a significant move across most of the farming sector in its approach to soils. It has been a rediscovery of the understanding that the natural facility of soils depends on a flourishing ecosystem of microscopic animals, plants and fungi. I hope the Minister will think about this: I continue to hope that the Government will sort out the Bill’s description of fungi to make it scientifically literate—it currently is not—following the issues I raised in Committee, which are in no way political. They merely seek to ensure technical accuracy. When we focus on agroecology and, indeed, agroforestry, we need to move towards crop diversity. That is part of whole-farm varied systems. It means a system that works with nature, rather than trying to cosh it into submission.

I move to Amendment 9, to which I have also attached my name, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and backed by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. We have almost lost track of the fact that this is the Agriculture Bill. We are talking about environmental elements, but agriculture is also about food. We need joined-up thinking and systems thinking. There is really no point in producing more sugar, which the world has and consumes far too much of and does massive damage to rich and valuable soils. By contrast, growing fruit and vegetables is a super-policy—the kind of thing the Government should support and which they will have to, if they are to have regard to health and well-being policies.

Amendment 20, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, focuses on peri-urban land. I have probably done this myself: in the Bill we talk about the countryside, but fringe areas and patches of land in cities, towns and villages that might be quite small are crucial for environmental benefits and healthy food production. I am sure the Minister is aware of an excellent article from 2019 published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, which found that allotments and gardens often had 10 times more bees and other pollinators than even the rich environments, as we regard them, of parks, cemeteries and urban nature reserves. Increasing allotment use and food growing can be a positive sign for nature and, of course, for people.

I also express support for Amendment 6 on food security, to which Amendment 20 relates. Relying on the market to supply us with food has given us a dreadfully unhealthy diet, as the impact of Covid-19 has sadly demonstrated—one more weakness the pandemic has exposed rather than caused. However, it is also an insecure approach to rely on the market to supply food. Hundreds of millions of people in the world go hungry now not because there is a lack of food, but because of a lack of access to it. There is enormous waste in the system, particularly factory farming, feeding what could be perfectly good human food to animals.

However, we are in the age of shocks. We have just seen harvests in the US in particular be hit hard by extreme weather. Sadly, a lot more like that is on the way. The state of soils is parlous. To assume we can just buy what we need is dangerously uncertain. There is also a moral question: why should we take food out of the mouths of people in other countries when we could and should be growing our own? Those are two powerful reasons for the Government to provide direct, clear support for food security. There can be few more foundational roles for a Government then ensuring that people do not starve.

Finally, I support Amendment 48. I note the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and I agree with them.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank everybody who put their names to Amendment 9. I have a little confession: the original intention was to discuss it in the context of the part of the Bill dealing with access, because of the idea of tying health and well-being into public legislation. It is clear, as I have already said—and nobody has argued otherwise—that if you are fit and active, you tend to have better health. However, does the amendment fit in its allocated group? Having thought about it, those organising the Bill have got it right. It fits because it ties in with the general thrust of what we are saying.

What are we doing to try to improve life for the whole planet and for ourselves together? I am afraid it sounds rather meaningless when I put it like that. The idea is that it is a whole, so we are taking something on board and relating it to other activities. If one thing is done under this Bill, it should be to ensure that we look at the whole of what we are doing. The amendment sits better in this group because we have to consider people’s health and well-being and the public good when we are putting money in. I hope that, when the Minister replies, he will not totally dismiss the idea that we should have better access to public spaces in order to undertake physical activity. However, that does not fit in with some of the other concerns being raised here about better diet and so on, because it is part of that whole.

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[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has set a wonderful precedent here. Anything I would have said on this has been said by those who have already spoken, so I shall leave it by saying that I support the amendment.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, has withdrawn, so I now call the noble Lord, Lord Naseby.

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[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I did not inform him that the noble Lords, Lord Marlesford and Lord Greaves, had withdrawn.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, on one of the first amendments we discussed in Committee, I said that for all the other things—the environmental benefits, et cetera—farmers are “the delivery system”, and so you have to maintain farmers. This means that you have to define who the farmer is, in a way that has not happened in the Bill, so that we can go forward.

My question to the Minister is this: do we have a definition of what sort of activity is covered by government subsidy here? That is really what needs to come out. For example, forestry would almost certainly come into the same view as agriculture. It may be that I have missed it, so I am trying to get that clarification down; it might make everybody feel slightly more comfortable about this. Who are the people who are supposed to do the other interesting stuff—the access things we have already talked about and the environmental things that are coming to the fore? Who is the delivery system? I cannot see it being anyone other than the farmer and I cannot see any way of it happening other than if they are paid. There simply is not another delivery system for this. There may be a slightly different version of this, but the farmer or land manager seems to require assurance that they are the focus of the activity.

As for supporting the two amendments, I am afraid the Minister has his fate in his own hands on that one, as ever. The fact of the matter is that if we can get out of it only who the groups are, and the definition of why you are going to support them in this changed regime, that would be a useful thing to come out of this, if nothing else.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, is not here, so I now call the noble Baroness, Lady Northover.

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[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I also declare my interest as a member of the EU Environment Sub-Committee. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on bringing forth this amendment. As its co-signatories and others who have supported the thrust of the amendment have said, it very clearly demonstrates the link between this Agriculture Bill, establishing public benefit and financial assistance for public goods, with the provisions of the Environment Bill.

I understand the difficulty the Minister is in, having listened very carefully to the words of our noble friend and colleague, the Minister who replied to an early debate, saying that he would love to give a date when the Environment Bill might be coming but was unable to do so. I hope my noble friend will look favourably on this amendment on equating the two Bills.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this is one of those occasions when we have to try to reference across from another piece of legislation to make a coherent whole. Environmental considerations are key if we are to achieve half of the accepted objective. That is where we are: it is accepted as something that has to happen. We have to combine the two. The entire political class agrees that, since there must be environmental improvement, they are going to have to work with sectors such as agriculture, and just about every other sector, in order to achieve that. Unless something like this is written down, we know that departments and groups of officials and Ministers will tend to go their own way. They are not good at paying attention to people you “should” talk to; they pay attention to people you “have to” talk to. I suggest that something like this would actually be a very good thing to have in the Bill.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I too support this amendment and I am grateful to the noble Baroness for tabling it again. Farmers have absolutely no idea what the future holds and what ELMS will contain—and we have none either. We have a blank canvas as far as that is concerned. Even on the last amendment, on training, my noble friend on the Front Bench said, “We are doing schemes—we still do not really know what we are doing, but we are doing tests at the moment to see what the best way forward is”.

Having heard the debates earlier on Clause 1, and having had support across the House for nature-friendly farming, it would seem to me utterly logical to include an amendment such as this, so that any potential farmer who reads this Bill will see that there is an immediate link to the environment. Therefore, I commend the amendment to the House.

I would also point out that this amendment will not cost the taxpayer a penny. In that respect it is one of the great amendments: it merely links two bits of legislation, and in doing so might even save the taxpayer money, because farmers and land managers will have a much clearer idea of what they are supposed to be doing to try to achieve a better and healthier farming environment.

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[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a landowner, an arable farmer and a recipient of payments from the BPS and its predecessor schemes. I will be brief, as the arguments have been well rehearsed on most of the amendments, which I support.

I support the reasons given by my noble friend Lady McIntosh for seeking to delay the start of the seven-year transition rule, having heard her concerns about farmers not knowing about the first plan, mentioned in Amendment 35, until after the Bill has become law.

I also support Amendment 37, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and his well-judged comments on the countryside stewardship and production grants. This amendment seems entirely sensible, in that it would stop any further reduction beyond 25% until the ELMS was available.

I also back Amendment 39, tabled by my noble friend the Duke of Wellington, the aim of which is to support small hill farmers. I wonder whether he might consider extending it to small lowland livestock farmers.

I am also sympathetic to Amendment 42, tabled by my noble friend Lady Rock. I would just like to say how good the RPA’s performance has been in recent years, and I am sure that that will be extended to the new regime.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, listening to this debate, it is quite clear that the one thing not available here is any degree of certainty or confidence regarding the future. My name appears on Amendment 41, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. I do not know whether he saw it, as I added it at the last moment, but it is there. For me, this amendment offers the preferred option in providing a degree of certainty. A year’s trial is probably the option that I like best. However, I am not a farmer and am not in the system.

I hope that when the Minister responds he will try to address some of the many concerns that have been expressed. The central theme running through them is that people are worried about the change and the transition. When there is that degree of concern running through a system and people feel that they cannot buy into it because they are uncertain, I suggest that something has gone fundamentally wrong. Without a degree of buy-in, it will not work.

I have already said today that the Minister is facing a challenge, but I believe that he is facing a slightly bigger one here. People in and around this industry really need to know what is going on. We have also heard people say that they do not want delays because of other schemes coming in, but if the fundamental group—the farmers—are concerned, we need something that gives them a solid basis for confidence. At the moment, it just is not there.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD) [V]]

My Lords, a transition period of seven years is quite a long period in which to phase out old policies under the CAP and bring in new policies under the Agriculture Bill. The transition is currently planned to begin in 2021, and it will be vital for Defra to put in place the necessary support to enable a stable and just transition for the farming community. There is currently much unease in this community about just how it will be affected in the future—a point made by many noble Lords.

Farming is not something that can be changed overnight. Time is needed to adjust farming plans and to secure the necessary capital investment to make some of the changes required. A key part will be support for business advice and skills training, time-limited support for capital investment to improve productivity sustainably, and wider improvements to connectivity in rural areas, such as rural broadband.