Duty to Participate in Education or Training (Alternative Ways of Working) Regulations 2013

Debate between Lord Colwyn and Baroness Sharp of Guildford

Monday 20th May 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

Perhaps I may pose one further question to the Minister. Chapter 2 of Part 1 of the Act places quite a number of obligations on local authorities—in particular, the rather difficult obligation of chasing up and identifying the young persons not meeting the Section 2 duty. Guidance is to be published on the Department for Education website, but I wonder when it is likely to be published and what proposals it is likely to make. Given that the diversity of schooling now means that it is not necessarily so easy to chase up what young people are doing and how they are participating, I think that this is going to be quite a difficult task for local authorities.

Picking up the point that the noble Lord, Lord Young, made—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Colwyn)]

My Lords, there should be just brief interventions for clarification. Perhaps the noble Baroness could keep it fairly short.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

I was just going to ask the Minister whether she would like to comment on the role of traineeships in relation to young apprenticeships.

EUC Report: Agriculture

Debate between Lord Colwyn and Baroness Sharp of Guildford

Monday 6th February 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I, too, declare an interest as a member of the sub-committee that produced the report. As the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, has just said, it is an extremely interesting report to participate in. In many senses it was a logical development from some of the other reports that we have been working on in the sub-committee. This is my fourth session on the sub-committee so I shall roll off. During this time we have looked at, among other things, the development of forestry and the impact of climate change on agriculture. Central to our deliberations has been the common agricultural policy and the reform of that policy. Innovation fitted in extremely well with all those reports and now we are looking at water, which is yet another aspect of the problems that we currently face and fits in with the whole question of innovation in agriculture. Above all, this report picks up on the challenge of climate change to agriculture. Our previous report on climate change and agriculture led us to be aware of the need to renew the research effort, not only in this country but in Europe as a whole, and to develop new processes and new technologies for agriculture.

We have been very much aware of the challenges facing the global environment. As the sub-committee chairman the noble Lord, Lord Carter, mentioned, we began by looking at the Foresight report on global food and farming futures, on which one of our witnesses, Professor Charles Godfray, had been the leading researcher. Of course, that report picks up what the Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir John Beddington, has described as the “perfect storm” now confronting the global environment through the combination of four elements: global population growth, which we have already mentioned and which is expected by 2050 to increase to 9 billion from the current 7 billion; the fact that climate change will shift the potential of different areas around the world to produce food; the exhaustion of fossil fuel energy sources; and the increasing competition for water resources. As all four of those issues coincide and come together in the course of the next 30 to 50 years, that will create a real urgency about how we are to feed all these people.

Therefore, the whole question of food security will become not only an issue but a very urgent issue. It is interesting that when we came to look at our report summary, we strengthened some of the conclusions. In relation to this challenge, we said:

“The response to this challenge has to start now. Decisions have to be taken, and actions implemented, with urgency”.

The issue of food security is an urgent issue that needs to be addressed and we have not time to dilly-dally for too long in responding to it.

It is interesting to reflect that, in the course of the 20th century we faced a similar population increase and, during that century, we fed that population really very amply. We used fossil fuel energy and made extensive use of fertilisers, but we also brought into play large amounts of land—on the one hand, through the destruction of rainforests and, on the other, through the expansion into wilderness areas. In much the same vein, we have used water to irrigate agricultural areas where water is scarce. For example, one need only look at how important irrigation is to Spanish agriculture and the Spanish fruit and food industry to recognise the difficulties that people will face as a result of climate change, given the problems that arise even with current water resources. However, we can no longer resort to the solutions that we had in the 20th century, as we now need our forests and our wilderness areas to absorb the CO₂ emissions that we are creating, and we are running out of fossil fuel energy. In any case, the pollution caused by the excessive use of fossil fuels creates its own problems and, in terms of CO₂, our water resources are increasingly scarce and costly to clean up.

Nevertheless, as has already been reflected in our discussion, those who have studied this issue are relatively optimistic that we can feed the increased population. As my noble friend Lady Parminter mentioned, one-third of the food we produce is wasted. If only we made use of what is wasted, we would have little difficulty feeding the mouths where hunger currently pervades. There is an enormous amount to be done. As the noble Lord, Lord Carter, mentioned, what is termed sustainable intensification of agriculture is required. Essentially, we can produce more from the same resources. The definition given of sustainable intensification is increasing agricultural yields without adverse impact on the environment and without bringing more land into cultivation. As Professor Godfray told us, it makes innovation critical to sustainability. If only we make use of the technologies and the processes out there, the combination of saving what we currently waste and making use of new technology gives us the answer to how we can feed the increasing population. If we can harness the potential of those new technologies and developments in agriculture, we are quite capable of feeding the growing global population.

The noble Lord, Lord Carter, mentioned projections of agricultural productivity: in Brazil, an increase of 40 per cent, in the USA, of between 15 and 20 per cent, but in Europe, 4 per cent. We asked ourselves: why is the potential productivity increase in Europe so low? Why, as Mr Häusler mentioned, is Europe such a hostile environment for innovation? The answer we came to is that it is a complex issue, a mix of very different things.

Traditionally, the CAP aimed to increase production more or less regardless of cost in order to make Europe as self-sufficient as possible—indeed, at one point, Europe was well more than self-sufficient—hence the heavy direct subsidy to the production regime. That was not broken until the early 1990s, 15 or 20 years ago, since when, if anything, the swing has been in the other direction towards limiting production and increasing the emphasis on public goods of agriculture: carbon sequestration, landscape and biodiversity. The new support mechanisms in that direction—Pillar 2, as we call them—were nevertheless still dominated by the old support mechanism, Pillar 1, which paid farmers directly in relation to their production. That gives farmers a degree of security—one issue that we have been debating in our committee in relation to CAP reform—but does it also breed complacency, and is that complacency in itself a barrier to innovation?

Another barrier to innovation is that Europe has a large number of small farms in relation to North America, South America and Australasia—but not in relation to Asia, which has many very small holdings—so despite subsidies, there are low incomes. Farmers cannot afford to innovate and experiment with new ideas; they are innately conservative. The European Commission is well aware of this challenge and currently consulting on reform of the CAP. Our report has been grist to that mill. It sees it as a timely input into the debate.

The report came up with five main solutions, which have already been mentioned. The first was to boost research; mention has been made of the fact that of the €400 billion spent on the CAP in the current financial framework, only €2 billion is spent on agricultural research. As we have also heard, in the next framework, which will be called Horizon 2020 instead of “Framework Programme 8”, it is projected that that will more than double to €4.5 billion and will be characterised not only by joint programmes but by the development of the European innovation programmes and various joint programme initiatives that are to take place.

That will still be just over 1 per cent of the total spend on agriculture. As a whole, the EU has a target of spending 3 per cent of GDP on research and development. If we were to spend 3 per cent of what is spent on agricultural support by the CAP, it would be something like €12 billion. If we were looking to spend 3 per cent as a whole, the total within the EU would rise considerably.

Much research is financed at member state level rather than funded by the Commission. As others have mentioned, the BBSRC, spending somewhere in the region of just less than £500 million a year, is one of the big spenders. France and Germany spend more. In the UK, much of the money from the BBSRC is for what I call the top end of the research—a great deal of genetics and genomics research—and not very much is for applied research. We highlighted the fact that it would be a good idea if more were spent on microbiology and research into soil.

Much money is spent at member state level but there is not nearly enough co-ordination. This was something that we were very much aware of, particularly the concept of the European innovation programme and the joint programme initiatives. As I understand it, the joint programme initiatives are bilateral whereas the European innovation programmes are promoted by the Commission and are essentially to bring member states together and allow them to co-ordinate and collaborate. We were aware of how very fragmented the effort was at the moment, and for that reason we very much welcomed the input of Incrops and the model that it suggested for how the European innovation programmes might be put to work and how they might work themselves out.

Is collaboration itself enough? We noted the example of the Netherlands, which has targeted excellence in the agrifood sector as a national objective and developed a very clear strategy nationally to achieve this. Do we want something stronger from the Commission, a European strategy for the agrifood sector that puts agricultural innovation within the broader context?

Is research itself enough? If it is going to be useful, it must be used—hence the emphasis that we put on knowledge transfer and, above all, knowledge exchange. Those using the developments in science and technology must be able to understand and, for that matter, influence the research so that it is user-friendly. That is why we put so much emphasis on the development of the Farm Advisory Service. Here, it is a mixed picture across the European Union and within the UK itself. Some countries, such as Denmark, France and the Netherlands, have very strong advisory services that help farmers adapt and develop new products and processes. In the UK we found much disappointment at the dismantling of the old ADAS service and its replacement with the mixed-consultant industry-based services, and much hope that the new levy-based AHDB and the new integrated advice pilot would work themselves out.

Generally, the government response seems to have been positive, backing up our recommendations. As the noble Lord, Lord Carter, has emphasised, the key issue is that of carrying through the recommendations into the reform of the CAP. I am particularly glad that the Government have responded so positively to our suggestion that we need to look at research within the broader strategic framework and the reorganisation of farm advisory services.

There is danger in assuming that the market will deliver when necessary. Sadly, the market has chosen the way often only after crises have overtaken events. To go back to where we started, innovation is the key to developing a sustainable agriculture sector, which in turn is the key to future food security.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Colwyn)]

My Lords, there is a Division, but I have a feeling that the noble Baroness is coming to the end of her remarks. Would she like to finish in 30 seconds?

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

Yes. If we wait too long, we may have lost the opportunity to prevent that crisis.