Farm Support

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for introducing this short debate, I declare my interests as a farmer and landowner. We will undoubtedly see much change in agriculture over the next 10 years. In that context, I have four points to make.

First—here noble Lords will see I am on the side of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, rather than that of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness—we should change the current system slowly. Anyone looking to alter their customer base or marketplace knows that the first requirement is to ensure that you do not lose your old customers before you have properly embedded your new sales programme. So if farmers are reckoned to become new customers of Defra on Brexit, providing a variety of services, it is important they are given time to change and understand where they might fit into this new marketplace. In other words, the current system of single farm payment should be gradually diminished over, say, five or eight years. It has never been a good system and provides little reward to society, but we do not want a cliff edge.

Secondly, farmers are unlikely to come out of Brexit well. The Brexit discussions will involve multifaceted trade negotiations of all sorts—financial services, cars, steel, whisky and wine, et cetera—with agriculture somewhere at the bottom of the heap. I suspect that France, Germany and Italy will be keener to protect their farmers than the UK Treasury. On the basis that non-EU countries currently have to pay 40% to 50% tariffs on food coming into Europe, this could be seriously bad for UK farmers, most of whose current exports go to the EU. Our only hope is that we can achieve some form of import quotas into the EU—even if on only a temporary basis—as near as possible to our current trading quantities.

Thirdly, post-Brexit trade deals are unlikely to improve matters. Again, these deals will be multifaceted and multicommodity and UK agriculture will be only a small pawn on the chessboard. Bear in mind that cheap food is usually a good vote winner for any Government, so cheap Australian and US beef or even chicken will be knocking on the door along with other products from hotter climes where labour is cheaper and the regulatory regime looser. Our farmers will not be able to compete. Our only hope is to ensure we impose high standards on all food from whatever source and, above all, retain very good traceability on both domestic and international products.

My fourth point is about the opportunities presented by Brexit. It amounts to a question of how much and for what the Government are prepared to pay land managers for services to society. Bill Bryson once said that apart from producing good, healthy food, the unique feature of the English countryside is that the English people love it to death. Indeed, they have much to be grateful for to our farmers and landowners, and I believe that they—the taxpayers—will not mind paying for environmental land services of all sorts. But there must be profits allowable in the scheme or schemes. Cost-price services, as at present, simply will not do. As I have explained, there will not be many other profits around for farmers, so the state must ensure that farmers are properly rewarded for what they do.

My main point, in summary, is that by hook or by crook we must ensure that our farmers can survive on the land. My last speech on this subject focused on harnessing an improved and diversified economy to keep farming households in place in all parts of our countryside. If we lose those households, we risk losing that hugely important and well-loved heritage asset that is the English countryside, created and nurtured by our forebears from Roman times to modern day and, as I say, still greatly loved by our nation. Of course, it changes and will continue to change, but it will always need nurturing by those who know and love its every fold and stream.