Lord Berkeley debates involving the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs during the 2019 Parliament

Thu 14th Oct 2021
Thu 16th Jul 2020
Agriculture Bill
Lords Chamber

Committee stage:Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wed 10th Jun 2020
Agriculture Bill
Lords Chamber

2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading

Food Import Requirements

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Wednesday 14th February 2024

(1 month, 2 weeks ago)

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Lord Douglas-Miller Portrait Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
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I thank the noble Baroness for her question. As I say, the Government are completely committed to domestic food production. I do not see that the introduction of the BTOM system has any bearing on what we import or export into or out of the UK.

Lord Berkeley Portrait Lord Berkeley (Lab)
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My Lords, the Minister recently announced that meat imported through Dover will be checked at Ashford, which is about 15 miles upcountry. How is anybody going to stop the trucks from going straight up the motorway rather than turning left at Ashford? Will there be any enforcement, or are they just trusting people?

Lord Douglas-Miller Portrait Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
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I thank the noble Lord for his question. It is important to differentiate between what is happening at the port of Dover and what is happening at Sevington. If you go to Sevington, you follow a system by completing the new electronic IPAFFS, which is designed for commercial imports. What is checked at Dover by Border Force is illegal imports. Now, you are not going to be sent to Sevington if you are illegally importing something; you go to Sevington only if you are following the Government’s designated procedures.

Oil Spill: Poole Harbour

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Wednesday 29th March 2023

(1 year ago)

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Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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Noble work is being done, and I thank my noble friend for pointing that out. There is a very clear line of process for compensation, which is that the polluter should pay. We will assist anyone who feels they have a legitimate case to make in following that process through. However, at this stage it is unclear whether there are significant losses. As I say, we are working with organisations such as the Food Standards Agency to make sure that the food is safe and that people can continue to produce high-quality shellfish from that area.

Lord Berkeley Portrait Lord Berkeley (Lab)
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My Lords, this oil spill is serious, and it is good that the Government are doing all they can to mitigate the effect. However, this oil field has been there for a very long time, and I recall a lot of opposition to any development such as this in such a sensitive site. Is there an argument now for looking at new developments on similarly sensitive sites and saying, “No, we’re not going to do it there under any circumstance”?

Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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We apply very strict environmental conditions to any new applications. I think this site is the largest onshore oil-producing business in Europe and it has been there for quite a long time. We want to make sure that all the supporting infrastructure is in the best possible condition and that this kind of spill does not happen again. For future licensing of this or any other site, huge measures will need to be taken to reassure local people that all measures are in place to protect them and the environment.

Environmental Targets

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Monday 31st October 2022

(1 year, 5 months ago)

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Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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The Dasgupta review was extraordinary in so many ways: first, because it was the first piece of work on the economics of biodiversity commissioned by a finance department in any country. The Treasury having commissioned it makes it a very powerful tool. It shows that we are talking about not just species that the noble Lord and I have grown up appreciating but the economic future of this country. It is fundamental to what we are talking about; that is why we want evidence-based targets. On the other matter, I refer the noble Lord to the answer I gave to the noble Viscount opposite.

Lord Berkeley Portrait Lord Berkeley (Lab)
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My Lords, the Government seem worried that too many people have responded to this consultation. This deadline was put in at the insistence of Parliament so that Ministers would be held to account. There is another deadline today in the Department for Transport—nothing to do with the Minister—so that is two deadlines missed. All that Ministers can say is, “We’ll ask them to extend the deadline.” That is not good enough. Surely, we have to get a grip on these things; if a Government commit to a deadline, they should keep to it.

Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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I entirely accept that point. I would be treating your Lordships with disrespect if I did not mention the elephant in the room: a bit of mid-air turbulence in recent weeks, which may have somewhat contributed to some of the wheels of government not being correctly oiled. However, I assure the noble Lord that we are determined to deliver proper, meaningful targets as soon as we can.

Sewage Pollution

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Wednesday 7th September 2022

(1 year, 6 months ago)

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Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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The Government did not make anything legal. The Environment Agency permits releases of storm overflows. Where they are not permitted, they are illegal. The Environment Agency has had its budget increased and has increased its number of enforcement officers. At the moment, it is carrying out 2,200 investigations into illegal waste being dumped in rivers and is making prosecutions, such as the one that saw Southern Water fined £90 million—a fine that presaged the change of hands of that company, welcome as that was.

On the measures in the Environment Act, one amendment wanted to end the release of any wastewater into rivers. That would have cost up to £600 billion and more than doubled bills, many of them for people on fixed incomes. It is important that we balance a resolute and ambitious plan with affordability for those who have to pay.

Lord Berkeley Portrait Lord Berkeley (Lab)
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My Lords, in the past week or two, South West Water has named 10 Cornish beaches as being unfit to swim off. I live there. It forgot my little beach in the village of Polruan, which is where I judge the sandcastle competitions every year. One day about a month ago, a great big flood of sewage came down on to the beach for several hours. It has just stayed there. People have videoed and reported it, but nothing has happened. Here we are, paying the chairman of South West Water more than £1 million to do absolutely nothing. It is time that some action was taken to clean up these beaches now.

Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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The noble Lord is absolutely right that that is disgraceful. If it was an illegal sewage dump, which I am sure it was, that matter should have been investigated and should be prosecuted. The Environment Agency now has the resources. Its ambitions have been set not just by Ministers but by legislation that requires this practice to finish. Of course, with our current infrastructure, there are occasions when, if there is not a release of sewage in a storm, that water will back up into people’s homes. We cannot have that in a modern economy such as ours. We must make sure that we build the infrastructure. Some £170 billion has been spent since privatisation on water infrastructure. We are spending enormous sums of money in this price review period, which will rise to £56 billion in the years ahead. The sort of things that the noble Lord describes are absolutely terrible in waters that we want to be enjoyed by people and tourists. Our coastal economies need to be blue-flagged to make sure that these are things of the past.

Water Companies: Environmental Pollution

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Tuesday 19th July 2022

(1 year, 8 months ago)

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Lord Berkeley Portrait Lord Berkeley (Lab)
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Can the Minister answer my noble friend’s Question? When will the directors and chairmen of these companies be sent to jail for what they have done rather than the company paying the fines?

Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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I refer the noble Lord to my earlier Answer: the independent Sentencing Council has agreed to review guidelines to ensure that the sanctions we apply to water companies are appropriate.

Food Price Inflation

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Thursday 19th May 2022

(1 year, 10 months ago)

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Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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Rewilding Britain is the campaigning organisation promoting rewilding and I think it has a target of 5% of the United Kingdom by the end of this century, which will not have an impact on food prices. It will, because of the change in the way we are supporting farmers, be bits of land that most farms can make available for ecological use rather than food production, without at all impacting on the food we eat. However, the right reverend Prelate raises a very important point about the way that some of the trillions of dollars of so-called ESG money is being spent in certain areas. The Government are taking this very seriously, because the S in ESG matters; the social dimension of how this money is spent, in what is called green finance, is really important. We need to protect our food security in the future and we are looking at this—not just ourselves in England but working with the devolved Governments to make sure that ESG money is being spent in a way that is honest, is not greenwash and does not curtail our ability to continue to feed ourselves.

Lord Berkeley Portrait Lord Berkeley (Lab)
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My Lords, the Statement said nothing about Ukraine, although other noble Lords have mentioned it. Is the Minister not aware that the production of corn, fertiliser and oil from Ukraine is a very significant part of world production? Is that not going to affect not only prices and availability here, but maybe a greater movement towards famine in other parts of the world? I think many noble Lords agree that it is very unlikely that the material will be got out of Ukraine in the volumes necessary unless the ports get opened—which they probably will not.

Culling of Pigs

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Thursday 14th October 2021

(2 years, 5 months ago)

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Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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That is a very valid point. Part of our discussions and the announcement that I hope we will be able to make imminently reflects what is also done in the poultry industry, where those changes were made to encourage more workers to come over and operate in that sector. We hope that this will alleviate the labour problems in this sector.

Lord Berkeley Portrait Lord Berkeley (Lab)
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My Lords, will the Minister consider inviting the Prime Minister and other Ministers who perhaps do not understand the difference between the culling business and the slaughtering business to go and work for a week in a slaughterhouse, with a slaughterhouse worker’s pay, to try to understand the differences between them?

Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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It is really important that we address the worker shortage right across the supply chain. The Agriculture Act allows us to intervene where we feel that retailers or any part in the supply chain are acting unfairly. This is another area we are looking at. It is important that we have the right people working in abattoirs, and indeed the processing industry, and that they are well rewarded for doing so. This is a vibrant marketplace for a type of meat that people want to eat and, as I say, it is suffering from a perfect storm of three or four different issues. We are trying to resolve this, including the very important point the noble Lord raised.

National Food Strategy Independent Review

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Tuesday 20th July 2021

(2 years, 8 months ago)

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Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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The noble Lord is absolutely right to say that the soft drinks industry levy—it is not a tax—has been a great success. The sales-weighted average sugar content per 100 millilitres in fizzy drinks reduced by 43.7% between 2015 and 2019. It is worth looking at how Henry Dimbleby has nuanced his recommendations by proposing a look at wholesale sugar and salt used by the industry to make food items that are becoming a serious problem to the health of this country.

Lord Berkeley Portrait Lord Berkeley (Lab)
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My Lords, are the Government proud of our status as the second most obese nation in the world after the United States, with which, presumably, they have a special relationship? Surely a tax on salt and sugar will reduce obesity and the cost to the NHS and, maybe, even make people happy. Why are the Government not doing it?

Lord Benyon Portrait Lord Benyon (Con)
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The noble Lord raises an important point. The Government have set out a very clear obesity strategy, with particular emphasis on children. Henry Dimbleby’s report is stark in its warnings about the health trends that have been created in this country. They are mirrored in other countries as well, but we have a serious problem. What the ground-breaking obesity strategy sets out is important. It is not just about what we eat but about how we encourage people to eat, through using watersheds in advertising and a range of other means. We are considering this report and all its recommendations, and will publish a White Paper within six months, which may satisfy the noble Peer.

Agriculture Bill

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Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 16th July 2020

(3 years, 8 months ago)

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Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Portrait Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]
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My Lords, I lend my support to Amendment 87. I declare my interest as an honorary associate of the British Veterinary Association.

In the 1980s, we had an extensive network of small, family-run, easily accessible abattoirs, then along came an innocuous draft EU directive on slaughterhouses. As an MEP, I took soundings from many in rural communities. We worked very closely with what was then MAFF. Off his own bat, after years of waiting, and in a classic example of gold-plating, an official in MAFF took the opportunity to drive a coach and horses through the abattoir network and close many of the well-functioning, perfectly safe, smaller abattoirs serving the rural communities.

That brought devastating results in the early 1990s and again in the early 2000s, when we experienced BSE and foot and mouth disease. As the noble Lord, Lord Trees, said in moving this amendment, that led to longer journeys for livestock being taken to abattoirs, and potentially the spread of those diseases at that time. The noble Lord quite rightly identified this problem, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, has just said, there are now parts of Scotland, particularly the islands, without abattoirs and completely dependent on mobile abattoirs. That raises costs to the producer, which goes to the heart of the viability of livestock production in the rural areas of the Highlands and Islands and, as the noble Lord, Lord Trees, said, raises serious animal welfare concerns.

We must revert to a better and more extensive network, as we enjoyed before. This network of smaller, family-friendly, easily accessible slaughterhouses should be put in place and Amendment 87 provides the means to do so.

Lord Berkeley Portrait Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]
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My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Trees, on this amendment, so ably proposed by him and the two noble Baronesses who have just spoken.

I am no expert on agriculture, but I live in the Isles of Scilly, and I want to give a small example of the need for an abattoir there, which may be similar to the example of Scotland just given by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. There are five inhabited islands in the Isles of Scilly. They all have livestock—cows and often pigs—and they provide some good conservation grazing, overlooked by the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust. All the farmers are very much in favour of having an abattoir on the islands and would probably increase the number of cows they have if this were the case.

One problem at the moment is that they go from the off-islands in their trailers in a small freight ship to St Mary’s, and then on to another freight ship to Penzance, which takes about five hours on a good day—it does not travel on a bad day. They may then be trailed as far as Plymouth, which probably takes another five hours or so, and then, as we all know, the animals are rested before being slaughtered. Another problem is that there is an enormous cost to this. Some farmers say that the feedstuffs they have to buy cost three or four times as much as on the mainland.

There is an enormous interest in having a fixed abattoir on St Mary’s. The Duchy of Cornwall, which is the landlord here, has told me that it would be keen to see one built here now that the problems of remote veterinary oversight, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, have been overcome. All the farmers would use it but the problem, of course, is the capital cost. It is expensive and would not be used all the time but, once it was operational, it would wash its face because there is a big demand for local meat here, grown locally. Even when it goes to the mainland and comes back in butchered portions it is very popular—I think it is really good.

My only comment on the amendment itself is that for us in Scilly, “slaughtering” would need to include a cutting room and butchery. They may need to be part of it. Again, I am no expert on this; some other noble Lords who have spoken, or the Minister, may be able to put me right. But if we are going to slaughter the animals here on this island—or, I suggest, in other remote areas in the Scottish islands or parts of the mainland—we need to butcher and prepare them, and then be able to sell them locally. That would be really beneficial to the local economy at this time, when many hill farmers and remote farmers are very concerned about what will happen after Brexit.

When the Minister comes to wind up, I hope that he will either agree to this amendment or invite us to a meeting or two and come up with his own suggestions on this small but very serious problem. It could enable the hill farmers and island farmers—and probably remote farmers in Cornwall as well—to survive and prosper, using local and rare breeds on occasions, along with many other benefits of local delivery. I fully support the amendment.

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Portrait Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB) [V]
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My Lords, my interests are as on the register. In addition, I chair The Prince’s Countryside Fund and this is an issue of deep concern to that fund, which has attempted to provide support to some of the threatened abattoirs, particularly on the Scottish islands referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I also declare that I speak as a former chair of the Meat and Livestock Commission, which I was when much of the EU legislation to which she also referred was introduced, leading to the closure of a lot of small abattoirs.

I very much support Amendment 87, sponsored by my noble friend Lord Trees. The geographical network of abattoirs across the United Kingdom is essential to ensure that local livestock producers have slaughtering facilities. These UK livestock producers are becoming increasingly worried about their future at present and feeling threatened on a number of fronts. There is high-profile media support for plant-based protein, for example, as referred to in debate on the Bill earlier this week, and that land should be converted from meat production to plant-based food. A vast proportion of the landscape of Britain is incapable of producing plant-based food for direct human consumption. It delivers a huge range of environmental benefits by grazing livestock, including biodiversity and carbon capture. This was referred to comprehensively by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, in debate on the previous group of amendments.

Agriculture Bill

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

(3 years, 9 months ago)

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Lord Berkeley Portrait Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]
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My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. The nearest I can come to making a declaration of interest is that I live on the Isles of Scilly next to a farm which grows all kinds of vegetables and fruit, and which has pigs, cows and chickens. That farm is really suffering at the moment because of Brexit and transport costs, and the farmer has had to kill most of the pigs and chickens. That is just one example of the problems, mentioned by many noble Lords, of bringing forward this Bill at the same time as the coronavirus pandemic and Brexit. I support the key tests proposed by my noble friend Lord Grantchester regarding safe and traceable food, support for jobs, investment in research, and high standards. The Bill needs to deliver those.

On jobs, many noble Lords spoke about the need to improve skills for agricultural workers, but I believe that our immigration policy is putting the ongoing viability of many farmers at risk. Noble Lords will have read that several flights of workers from Bulgaria and Romania came in a month or so ago. None of them had social distancing on the plane. They were all exempt from the 14-day quarantine period, because there are no workers in this country. I enjoyed reading about the equivalent problem in Germany, where the chairman of their fruit and vegetable pickers association said that Germans are no longer the right shape to bend down and pick vegetables. I do not know what we will do, but the Government must set up some kind of long-term arrangement to ensure that there is a proper supply of seasonal workers in the sector and make them welcome.

On finance, I would welcome any scheme for agriculture that gives more support to local farmers and hill farmers, particularly those who have sheep. There is a double whammy here: I understand that in six months’ time, according to Professor Fiona Smith from the University of Warwick, if we do not get agreement on Brexit there will be a 51% duty on the export of sheepmeat to the European Union. How will farmers deal with this? It might be that the sheep can be exported elsewhere, but we ought to know a bit more about these things at this stage, with only six months before Brexit happens. The House needs a lot more time and much more detail.

My last point is that a lot of this traffic goes between the EU and the UK in trucks. There is still no border operating manual to tell operators and customers how they are supposed to move these goods, whether they are temperature-controlled fresh fruit and vegetables, meat or animals. Many of these journeys need phytosanitary controls. It is no good trucks queueing up for several days at Calais or Dover, because most of the product will be inedible or dead, sadly, before they get to the other side.

I hope the Minister will tell us a lot more about the information that operators and customers will need. I hope that he actually cares. I think that he does, but an awful lot of other people in the Government do not seem to care at all as long as we can get Brexit done and all our exports to the EU converted to the United States.