Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Inglewood and Baroness Scott of Bybrook

Committee stage & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, we have been on this set of amendments for over three hours now. We need to finish Committee tonight, so I ask noble Lords whether they can be a little quicker with their comments in future, then we might get done.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who—it may not have been apparent to your Lordships—was speaking from just over the hill from me in Cumbria. I put my name down to speak to Amendment 270 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, but my thoughts cover the entirety of the amendments we are considering at this point.

I am a farmer; I farm. My business and I face serious challenges, but I dare say I speak for many other farmers when I say that we are up for it—and anyway, we do not have much choice, do we?

Earlier in Committee, I said—slightly oversimplifying and slightly tongue in cheek—that since the end of the Second World War, Governments have paid public money to farmers because they wanted them to produce food and farm. In the brave new world into which we are now going, it has all changed and been turned on its head: farmers are paid public money to do everything and anything on land except produce food, while the food they might produce will be paid for by the market. While there is clearly a change entailed here, it is important to see that there is also a continuity: the central place of farming in the rural economy. It is merely the context in which it operates that is changing.

I do not believe this change of direction can work if food suppliers to this country from elsewhere in the world do not have to meet the same or equivalent standards demanded of domestic producers. The reason for that is that, regardless of any immediate direct impacts on either consumers or the environment, UK producers will not be able to compete and then the whole construct of the future of rural Britain will be put under threat and may well collapse. Were that to happen, not to provide a degree of protection would be a form of state aid given by the UK Government to foreign farmers. I do not believe that is an acceptable political response to taking back control. In short, it is not on.

In my view, unless the Government properly kitemark their intentions and policies with legally watertight guarantees—which, we understand and have heard this afternoon, is exactly what the British public want—under the proper control and in accordance with the procedures well established in the British constitution by Parliament, why should the rest of us place reliance on what we are told? I would like to hope that this matter can be clarified and resolved before Report.