Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord De Mauley and Lord Addington

Committee stage & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 23rd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Trees, I would like to speak to Amendment 258. On 25 June, the Government announced that they would consult on mandatory labelling provisions by December this year. This amendment builds on that verbal commitment, to mandate in legislation that the Government must report to Parliament, within six months of the Agriculture Act coming into force, how they will take forward mandatory labelling provisions, what they will cover and when regulations will be adopted. It sets a timetable of six months for the report and one year for the regulations to be laid.

At present, there is only one mandatory method of production labelling scheme, for shell eggs, as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, said. This has been in place for 17 years and has been highly successful in driving up animal welfare standards, providing consumers with clear information on animal welfare provenance and helping British egg farmers.

In 2020, over 55% of British egg production is on free-range systems, up from only 15% when the scheme started in 2003. It is clear that, where other sectors have only voluntary labelling on methods of production —such as for chicken, pork meat, bacon and beef—consumers can experience difficulty choosing higher-welfare products, and farmers who wish to raise their standards are hindered in doing so.

This amendment would change that situation by asking the Government for a clear timetable on announcing the sectors and species they intend to bring into mandatory production labelling. Of course, this is particularly important as we seek new trade deals. Giving consumers clear information on provenance and production methods will help support UK farmers and raise standards. If imports of a product are permitted, consumers need to be able to choose to prefer or avoid certain methods of production. A mandatory labelling scheme provides this assurance and gives transparency in the market.

The six-month timescale proposed by the amendment for the Secretary of State to publish a report detailing proposals is broadly in line with present government commitments to produce such a report by the end of the year. Moving this forward swiftly would give producers and retailers time to plan for labelling provisions and allow a year before regulations need to be laid, giving them enough time to implement the provisions.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, this is a very wide-ranging set of amendments. I feel slightly sorry for the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, because I thought her amendment was a good one with good points, but it seems to have been rather left behind by the debate.

If we are to keep up standards in agriculture, there will be costs, which the consumer will ultimately have to bear. If we do anything to undermine that, products simply will not be purchased in sufficiently high numbers for many of our producers to carry on.

I am not just repeating the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, in parrot-fashion: this is exactly what happened in the past. If your production levels are left behind and your prices are too high, people buy something else. It was called the great agricultural depression when the steam ship and a free market policy opened up the prairie and the pampas to production. Look it up: most British farmland was rough grazing.

So it is clear that, if we need to keep people in production, and to keep that production going, we need to maintain standards. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, said in conversation to me that everything has been too reasonable. Well, I give her all the encouragement to be as unreasonable as she likes on this one. I hope that the Minister will take away the need for it by agreeing to make sure that standards are kept. If they are not, I am afraid that we are going to have to readdress this issue at every available opportunity.