Agriculture: Common Agricultural Policy

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, there are a couple of questions in there from my noble friend. Our priorities for CAP reform have always been to help EU agriculture become more competitive and market-oriented while improving the capacity to deliver better environmental outcomes. It is unclear precisely what the greening requirements will look like since the detailed rules have yet to be drawn up. However, we are working to ensure that all these elements are complementary and coherent so that we have a smooth transition to the new programme in 2015.

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle]

My Lords, could I pursue with the Minister the issue of the existing environmental schemes referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Plumb? Many farmers have signed contractual agreements for the entry-level scheme, and I can claim some responsibility for that scheme, having recommended it. They are under an obligation under those contracts. Will these be jeopardised by the new greening arrangements? There is a lot of concern and some confusion among the farming community on this issue.

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes a very good point. If I have understood him correctly, no, it is very much our intention that they should not be adversely prejudiced.

Horsemeat

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle]

My Lords, this is a deeply concerning crisis and potentially could impact on consumer confidence in the products that we produce here in the United Kingdom. I was involved in the 1990s in dealing with the deep concerns about food safety and the various crises that occurred at that time. We set up internal systems of traceability through insurance schemes. This is now known as the red tractor scheme. This crisis has led to a much deeper level of testing being required through DNA. That throws up a real issue around the thresholds to which we are prepared to accept tolerance of DNA testing. If we insist on zero tolerance, then butchers’ shops would have real difficulty in complying. Are the Minister and the department considering levels of tolerance for DNA testing?

[Lord De Mauley]

That is an important question. The answer is yes. The FSA has advised that 1% is a level of evidence at which it can take action. This is a temporary level as we undertake urgent scientific work to set the most appropriate threshold. This is the level at which the FSA can be confident that the results are reliable for enforcement purposes.

Flooding: Insurance

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My noble friend is of course right that there are concerns about the continued availability of insurance to householders—mortgage holders and those looking to sell their houses. We are working with those involved better to understand what the impact on the mortgage market might be. I am certainly encouraged that the Council of Mortgage Lenders is quoted as saying that the focus needs to be on finding a solution on flood insurance, rather than worrying householders unnecessarily about how lenders might choose to react. That has a knock-on effect on the selling market to which my noble friend refers. I also point out that in July, we published a guide to obtain flood insurance in high-risk areas in collaboration with the National Flood Forum and industry representatives, which I think is helpful.

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle]

I, too, encourage the Minister to bring those discussions to a conclusion as soon as possible. I declare an interest: I was chair of a mutual insurance company until the end of last year. I have a further concern. Those companies which have a strong CSR policy could be commercially disadvantaged in the marketplace compared with those who take a purely commercial approach. It is also deeply regrettable that planning permission is still being granted in areas that the Environment Agency has identified as potentially subject to flooding, which is simply aggravating the problem in the long term.

[Lord De Mauley]

The noble Lord makes a couple of good points. In answer to his last one, development in areas of flood risk is permitted only exceptionally, where there are wider sustainability considerations, and must in all cases be safe, must not increase flood risk elsewhere; and, where possible, overall flood risk should be reduced.

Public Bodies (Abolition of the Commission for Rural Communities) Order 2012

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to this, and his team for providing the explanatory document about the different ways in which consultation will take place with rural groups such as the Rural and Farming Network, ECO and its sub-groups, the Rural Coalition, local economic partnerships, the Rural Service Network and the LEADER exchange group. I know that LEADER is an initiative to do with the delivery of the Rural Development Programme for England, but the word made me think. These groups, or leaders of groups, such as farmers, businessmen and local councils, are all stakeholders—to use the Minister’s word—in the countryside.

Who is going to represent the deprived of rural England—those who sometimes go with only one meal a day because they know that they have to spend their money on a car to get to their valuable work, or to have any of form of life there? Who is going to speak up for the countryside’s young, who cannot get a job because they have not got the transport to get to one and cannot get the transport to get to a job because they have not got a job to pay for the transport? Who is going to speak up for the unemployed, the unhoused and others?

The Minister will know that I am in a slightly difficult position. I have been asked by Richard Benyon, the Defra Minister in the Commons, to pool together a group of Peers to help rural-proof the government department’s policies in each individual case, but I still have not quite grasped who is going to do or commission the critical and independent research that will penetrate the normal attitude of most departments to the countryside, which is ambivalent at best. Actually, their attitude ranges from ambivalence to total ignorance and they need spurring on.

Most of us in this Room have argued our best on several occasions for some representation at arm’s length from Government, as stated by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, of those rural voices that are not normally heard. I hope that the Minister can reassure me on the question of the independent, fearless research that is often critical of the Government, and which departments are, frankly, unable, to carry out. I hope that he can also reassure me on my point about who will represent the voice of the rural deprived.

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his statement and his desire to ensure that the commission’s functions are properly fulfilled within Defra. I say from the outset that I am not opposing the decision to abolish the CRC. However, it is now clear—indeed, it was clear to many of us at the time—that in the desire to have a large bonfire of the quangos, decisions were taken without a clear plan for properly addressing the consequences. I am pleased that Defra has a plan, but I would like to be reassured that the functions of the CRC will be properly resourced and carried out by Defra. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, the CRC did some very helpful and useful research into issues like rural poverty and changes in demographics in the countryside that will be essential in helping design policies that impact on the countryside.

It is essential, as has been said, that government policies have a degree of rural-proofing. Without an independent commission, I suggest that it will be difficult for the department to fulfil this function without trying in the process to defend government policies in doing so. It is difficult for a department to be, if I might use the phrase, both gamekeeper and poacher. The role of the rural advocate, as the noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Cameron, said, has been extremely useful in highlighting many vital rural issues. Dr Burgess has been a very effective and active advocate, as was his predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, before him. It has already been stressed that the element of independence that has been so valuable is being lost. The role of the rural advocate should be reconsidered.

However, I welcome the Minister’s assertion that ensuring growth within rural areas is critical to the Government and is being recognised. I have always believed that it is impossible to draw a line between rural and urban in any case; one is dependent on the other, and government policies need to reflect that. Without the vital independence of a rural advocate, though, it really is difficult to know where any challenge is going to come from.

[Baroness Parminter]

I add my thanks to those of noble Lords before me who thanked the Minister for his opening remarks, and I welcome the order. The debates to date seem to have been around how successful the new arrangements will be in delivering the vital roles that the CRC has performed in the past in its roles of adviser, watchdog and advocate. I do not want to revisit those but I shall ask a few questions that I hope the Minister will touch on.

The first question is around the issue of adviser and watchdog. It is clear that rural community policy units are being set up to be centres of rural expertise, and that is to be welcomed. However, it is also clear that they will have to have to have a firm external focus, otherwise they will end up talking to many of the usual suspects. I would welcome a list of organisations that they will be engaging with but, having taken the opportunity to look at the Defra website today, I struggled miserably to find anything about the objectives and activities of this important new unit. If I were an activist in a local community who wanted to find out what was going on—if I had any initiatives that I wanted to share or discuss with the Government—I would have no concept of what their activities or programmes of work were. I therefore ask the Minister if the public interface of that unit could be looked at, particularly the website.

EUC Report: Agriculture

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle]

My Lords, I am very pleased that this report is being debated today and grateful to the committee for its publication. It is not only timely but on an extremely important subject, as we have heard, and is worthy of debate. May I say what a great honour it is to be a Member of this House and to find myself in the company of so many eminent and highly respected noble Lords? May I also add how grateful I am to the many friends I have on all sides of the House for the very warm welcome I have received? I am particularly grateful to my friends, the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, and the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, my supporting Peers, for their wise counsel and enthusiastic support. The noble Baroness is, I am thankful to say, still rescuing me when I get lost or step out of line.

I should like, with noble Lords’ permission, to say a little about myself. I gather that it is not uncommon to do so on the occasion of a maiden speech. I come from a farming family background in Northumberland. In 1971 my wife and I secured the tenancy of a farm situated in mid-Northumberland in the hamlet of Kirkharle, hence my title. I assume that many noble Lords will know that Kirkharle is the birthplace of Lancelot Brown, who became known as Capability Brown, the great landscape architect—a notable heritage indeed. However, what may not be as well known is that I am not the first Baron of Kirkharle. A family named Loraine owned the lands of Kirkharle for centuries and was granted the barony. William Loraine gave Capability Brown his first job in 1728, clearly recognising his emerging talent. There is a stone in the middle of a field to mark the death of one of his predecessors, a Robert Loraine, who was,

“barbarously murdered … by the Scots in 1483 … returning home from the church where he had been at his … devotions”.

Family records state that he was chopped into pieces, put in his saddle bags and the horse sent home.

Kirkharle was, and still is, in border country. I remind those who, as a contribution to the current debate on Scottish independence, suggest rebuilding Hadrian’s Wall, that most of Northumberland, including Kirkharle, lies north of Hadrian’s Wall and we wish to remain part of the United Kingdom. Sheep stealing was the cross-border currency then, and my early business experience at Kirkharle was in farming sheep and beef cattle—not stealing them, I hasten to add. My wife ran a very successful farmhouse bed and breakfast business during that time. We were there for 12 very formative and enjoyable years, and it was then that my interest in agricultural, food and rural policy was determined—which brings me to the debate before us today.

I compliment the sub-committee for this valuable report and the recommendations contained in it. This topic is of critical importance and needs to be taken very seriously indeed by the House. As has been mentioned, it follows a number of recent reports: the follow-on from the foresight study led by Professor Sir John Beddington, the EU Commission’s Horizon 2020 document, the Royal Society report, and others, including one for which I was responsible 10 years ago, which drew our attention to the huge global pressures we face and the need to find sustainable solutions.

Innovation is certainly going to be required and the recommendations in the report are important. The well documented rise in the global population has been referred to already; it is now 7 billion and is forecast to rise to 9 billion by 2050. In addition, there is the impact of climate change, leading to increased desertification and weather volatility. There is a direct link between global weather patterns and commodity price volatility. Even here in Britain with our temperate climate, the Environment Agency is deeply concerned about water table levels in the south and east of England in the depth of winter. River flows are exceptionally low and rainfall has been between 30 per cent and 40 per cent lower than normal, which has led to restrictions on extraction that will have serious consequences for this year’s growing season, unless the position changes.

These issues have rightly heightened our concerns about food security. As Professor Bob Watson reminded us, the challenge is not one of feeding the world today. There is enough food, although the margin between supply and demand is finely balanced. Sadly, there are still more than 1 billion undernourished people in the world and about 1 billion who are obese. We waste more than 30 per cent of our food here in Britain, and I suspect that the figures are similar throughout the western world. The challenge today is one of governance, logistics and distribution, and of finding ways of providing today’s technology to sub-Saharan Africa.

We have been incredibly successful in our ability to increase food production in parallel with the increase in the global population, and I am fairly confident that we will continue to do so, provided that we increase our investment in science and technology, as suggested in the report. The subject of research—how we determine our priorities, and how we mend the pipeline to ensure that scientific knowledge is translated into practical solutions—is of course a high priority in the report, and rightly so. I know that it is a high priority for the Minister, who conducted his own study. For that, we should be very grateful. As he knows, I am keenly interested in this subject and will be doing what I can to further the cause. The impact of these global challenges and the role of science will need to be front of mind as the imminent CAP reform negotiations begin in earnest. The eventual outcome will be critical in shaping how we respond to these issues. As the noble Lord, Lord Roper, and other noble Lords know, I chair the Better Regulation Executive, and one of my deep concerns is that out of the CAP reform process we may find ourselves lumbered with significant additional bureaucracy. That, under the current proposals, is a serious risk that will itself stifle innovation—the very subject that we are trying to encourage.

No, in my view the challenge is not just whether we can grow enough to feed the world but whether we can reduce our environmental impact at the same time. Our ecosystems are fragile; our greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon emissions, are too high; and we are too reliant on expensive inputs to support current production levels. We need to find new tools and innovative solutions to help us produce more from less. To address this challenge, we need to continue to invest not only in science but in people. Investing in one and not the other will not achieve the outcomes that we are looking for. We need to invest in schoolchildren so that they have an understanding of these issues, and we need to invest in career development opportunities so that we attract young people who can help deliver the sustainable systems necessary—whether they be scientists, teachers or technicians who want to work in agriculture because it is such a fascinating challenge, and an exciting opportunity at such a pivotal point in history.