Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Hain and Lord Hope of Craighead

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 267, to which the noble Lords, Lords Bruce of Bennachie and Lord Wigley, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, have very kindly added their names. It seeks to insert into Clause 40 a provision designed to protect the interests of the devolved authorities with regard to the exercise of the regulation-making powers conferred on the Secretary of State by that clause.

I express my support for Amendment 291, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Wigley, Lord Bruce and Lord Thomas of Gresford. I am also very much in sympathy with the amendment that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has just spoken to and to which my Amendment 255, which will be debated some time on Thursday, closely relates.

Turning to my own amendment, Part 6 of the Bill, of which Clause 40 forms part, concerns the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, which came into force in 1995. The agreement, reduced to its simplest terms, contains three pillars: domestic support, market access and export subsidies. The EU’s common agricultural policy has been subject to its discipline ever since the agreement was entered into. That responsibility, so far as the UK is concerned, will pass to the Government of the United Kingdom when the transitional period comes to an end. That, as I understand it, and in short, is what Part 6, and Clause 40 in particular, is all about.

It has been drafted on the assumption that it will be the responsibility of the Government at Westminster to ensure that all UK policies on domestic support, including those of the devolved Administrations, are compliant with the agreement. That is because, so the argument goes, the UK will be the signatory to the agreement, not the individual nations within it. As a matter of international law, there can be no argument with this approach, but the Bill is concerned with the exercise of this responsibility within the United Kingdom. This is a matter which needs to have regard to our own domestic arrangements, and especially to the fact that agriculture is devolved.

Indeed, agriculture is not, in the case of any of the Administrations, reserved to Westminster. Therefore, as these Administrations see it, the starting point for any system of regulation to ensure WTO compliance by the UK as a whole must be that it is the responsibility of each of the devolved Administrations to devise its own system for the support of agriculture with whatever resources may be available.

When one examines Part 6 in that light, it can be seen that it fails to respect these domestic arrangements. Clause 41(5) will enable the Secretary of State, in the exercise of the Clause 40 power, to set financial ceilings in relation to agricultural support provided by the devolved Administrations of a kind that is classified as “Amber Box” by the WTO, and to establish a decision -making process for the classification of agricultural support in accordance with WTO criteria.

The Secretary of State could set limits on the amount of domestic support targeted at specific measures that the devolved Administrations were seeking to apply to meet their own objectives. Those could be at a lower ceiling than exists under the current arrangements. Reducing the amount of support given to sheep farmers in Wales and Scotland, for example, would be a matter of very great concern, given the narrow margins within which hill farmers in those countries have to operate and the formidable challenges they now face due to the collapse of the export market for wool, to take just one example.

My amendment seeks to ensure that the Secretary of State will consult the devolved Administrations when he prepares regulations under this clause. It does not go so far as to require him to secure their agreement. In an ideal world, that would of course be desirable so that all parts of the UK could work together on this matter but, given the political tensions that currently exist, asking him to secure agreement may be asking for too much. I am not asking for that, but I stress the importance of consultation so that the Secretary of State is fully informed before decisions are taken and that this is written into the Bill.

It is good that, as can be seen from Amendment 268, the Government have departed from insisting on the provision of information by the devolved Administrations about their own proposed or existing farming support, as that is their business. But consultation about steps that the Secretary of State proposes to take is essential if serious misunderstandings and, worse still, a real sense of injustice and resentment are to be avoided. I should add that NFU Scotland supports this amendment, although it would prefer that decisions on financial ceilings should be taken not just after consultation but with the agreement of the devolved Administrations.

I recall that on 7 July, replying to an amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, the Minister said:

“Good progress has already been made by the United Kingdom Government and the devolved Administrations in developing an administrative framework for co-ordinating agricultural policy on the basis of co-operation and mutual consent.”—[Official Report, 7/7/20; col. 1043.]


I think he has said the same thing on a number of occasions this evening. I very much welcome that but I hope that, in that spirit, he will look favourably on my amendment and I look forward very much to his reply.

[Lord Hain [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who made some compelling arguments, especially about the devolved question. I endorse the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, about Wales and the Welsh Government’s needs.

I wish to speak to Amendment 284 in my name. The shape and political make-up of the UK have shifted significantly since the last time we laid domestic agriculture legislation 40 years ago. When the UK first adopted the common agricultural policy, it was on behalf of the whole UK. Now, as we seek to replace that policy, we are doing so as four distinct Administrations with overarchingly aligned but divergent interpretations of what the common agricultural policy is able to deliver.

Devolution developed within the context of the CAP. The Welsh Government were given competence for agriculture policy in 1999. The strength of devolution, for agriculture in particular, is that it gave the constituent parts of the UK—areas whose topography and climate have produced vastly different agriculture sectors—the ability to shape the policy and support to suit individual needs. The flexibility to tailor individual needs while working with high-level parameters and outcomes, laid out in the framework of the CAP, was a key component of what made the policy work in terms of its structure, while delivering the careful balance between divergence and uniformity. The common overarching objectives—the commitment to seven-year funding cycles, the broad agreements on spending limits and the overall breadth and intention of the policy framework —combined to produce a competitive but level playing field. It was a structure that enabled disparate areas with different agricultural systems to address local needs while working towards strategic goals.

As the UK Government and devolved Administrations develop new agricultural policy with new policy intent, we must surely take time to consider not merely what CAP delivered but how it delivered it. While the landscape and agricultural sectors of Wales may be different from England or Scotland—or Northern Ireland, for that matter—we are unified by the need to trade effectively both internally and externally. The fundamental need to unify areas of common interest should be accounted for in this Bill.

For Wales, the most pressing issue is the ability to agree and deliver a multi-annual funding arrangement with Her Majesty’s Treasury. Multi-annual funding is key to providing stability to a sector that takes time to see the impact of any investment or delivery of any environmental outcome.

Currently, the budget for Wales is set through the annual spending review negotiation between the Treasury and the Welsh Government. An annual funding mechanism for agriculture and land management will create too much uncertainty for Welsh farmers. This lack of stability will destroy the level playing field for farmers and agribusinesses in Wales and consequently the integrated food supply chain within the UK. This is a uniquely Welsh constitutional and political problem.

In this Agriculture Bill, we have a clear opportunity to put in place steps to design and deliver a multi-annual funding arrangement that can create a common structure with shared opportunity against shared UK objectives while allowing devolved Administrations to meet domestic needs. It is the first building block to ensuring that we can accommodate and build resilience into our agricultural sector, our food and drink sector, and the UK’s national security. This is the context in which I have spoken to my amendments.