Queen’s Speech

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, I want to talk about what must, alongside defence, be the most important concern of any Government: feeding the people. There used to be a great department of state called the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. It did what it said on the tin. Agriculture has now been absorbed into Defra and gets only a passing mention in the gracious Speech. Now that department’s title has gone and with it, I fear, has gone the belief that maximum food production is essential for the nation’s welfare. The spotlight has turned on to all things environmental and, if we are not careful, we shall forget what matters most of all.

I have followed the fortunes of agriculture all my life and, until recently, in helping to feed the nation it has been a huge and greatly appreciated success story. So much has changed since the old days of strict planning, marketing boards and fixed prices for farm produce set by government. Grain production has increased dramatically, as has meat production with increased welfare standards. Dairy farmers, under dreadful financial constraints, have responded superbly to the demand for milk. Over the years we have drained more land and cultivated as much as possible to provide the means of feeding the nation. The result has been, no doubt, a change in the look of the countryside, particularly in some regions, but it is important to acknowledge that this was recognised and accepted many years ago and steps have been taken to correct the situation.

In any case, what cannot be denied is that anyone travelling through our countryside today, despite larger arable fields and the yellow of oilseed rape, will find it still intact and very beautiful, so our policy must clearly be twin track. We must continue to produce as much food as possible while modifying our practices in order to protect and enhance our countryside. It is not either/or; we can, with thought and care, do both.

We are already doing so much. We are laying hedges and planting new ones, planting trees, leaving headlands uncultivated and modifying ploughing techniques to improve soil condition. We are looking again at what can be learned from the old practices of crop rotation. Fertilisers and pesticides, long a bone of contention, are now applied only when necessary, rather than routinely as in the past—better for the environment and cost- saving for the farmer.

We can protect the countryside without a loss in food production. What we must not do—but I fear we are very much in danger of doing—under any circumstances is seriously damage our food production by slavishly following the demands of the extreme climate change advocates, who, not content with rewetting and rewilding good farmland, would like, I am told, to see our dairy cows wearing methane gas masks. There is a new government slogan: “Public money for public goods”. It sounds vaguely like George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Perhaps, when the Minister replies, he will explain precisely what this means for farmers and how it will be administered. Who will check the hedgerows for nests and birds? Who will search the headlands for wildflowers? Who will count the hedgehogs? How will this translate sensibly into payments for farmers?

We used to pay farmers by the tonne or by the pint, which made sense. We now make payments by the acre, which does not. How will these new payments work in practice? With a rapidly growing population, and now the war in Ukraine, the shortage of grain could soon become extremely serious. For the sake of the country in both the short and the long term, we must not allow ourselves to be dragooned into ill-advised and fundamental changes in agricultural policy. We must think very carefully before we make what could turn out to be a monumental blunder.

Finally, I would like to say that sometimes our farmers are criticised for what is happening in our countryside, but who is really doing damage to our environment? Planes, trains, cars, factories, pylons, substations, wind turbines, road widenings, and huge, ugly housing developments that are completely out of place. HS2 is ploughing through ancient woodlands as we speak. Water companies are spewing raw sewage into our precious rivers. Tens of thousands of householders are concreting over their front gardens to park their cars. Townsfolk drop litter and fly tippers leave mattresses. How blessed we are to have our farmers, and how grateful we should be for all they do.