Agricultural Transition Plan

Lord Jopling Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

On the farmer situation, about 2,200 have entered the sustainable farming incentive to date. That is not particularly surprising, because the amount of money that was available was between £22 and £60 a hectare, and now there will be considerably more. There will be farmers who will not join the scheme because they can farm profitability without support, or for whatever reason. We monitor or collect data from farms right across the country. It is vital that we do, so that we know what crops are being planted and where. It will feed a very important piece of strategic work that I am sure the noble Baroness will support: the land use framework, which is coming forward.

The noble Baroness referred to Dr Gary Caldwell. Professor Henderson has been in touch with him on a number of occasions. There was a rumour that he had somehow been excluded. There is a paper trail of emails between Professor Henderson and Dr Caldwell. I can only rely on the evidence we have seen, in the report from the 12 eminent scientists, that indicated that the levels of pyridine were “very unlikely” to be responsible—we have to be very precise in our language here. We will keep our minds open and make sure that developments in that area address the points the noble Baroness makes.

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my farming interests in the register. Does the Minister agree that perhaps the most susceptible group of farmers in these difficult times are those on marginal land which is rather too good to be supported through the upland support schemes? Those are very often smaller farms on not good land. Is there anything in the Government’s proposals tailored specifically for this particular group in the margins?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. His knowledge and interest in this subject are of course really helpful. We want to make sure that precisely those farmers are able to access these schemes. In fact, they are the people most often able to deliver the kind of benefits we want, in reversing the decline of biodiversity, hitting our net-zero targets and hitting our tree-planting targets. There is something in there for them, particularly in the upland areas. If they are farming areas that have either upland or lowland peat, there is a standard that would be of particular value to them. I also draw farmers’ attention to the hedgerows standard. Farmers are used to hedgerows, and they are restoring their number to deal with those that were taken out with government grants in the 1970s. They know that if they can manage those hedgerows in a different way, it can have enormous benefits, both in carbon and biodiversity. I really hope they will benefit from these new standards.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Lord Jopling Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, for the purposes of Report, I declare my interests: I am still involved in a family farming enterprise growing crops and rearing livestock, I chair the board of the UK Centre of Ecology & Hydrology, and I am president of the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers.

As the House knows, I am a very strong supporter of the Bill and everything it stands for. It is only to strengthen the Bill that I have added my name to Amendment 19 tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Bakewell, because here again we touch on the same weakness in the Bill that I referred to at earlier stages—notably, the oversight of the ongoing welfare of animals and their ensuing progeny affected by these processes. As I said at Second Reading:

“To my mind, however, there is too much responsibility, certainly in the latter stages of the proposed development process, for the notifiers themselves to keep the welfare advisory body informed. It appears that the notifiers are in the driving seat.”—[Official Report, 21/11/22; col. 1218.]


These notifiers will be the ones who have probably invested millions of pounds, and almost certainly years of man-hours and academic endeavour in the process, and will therefore be very strongly motivated to ensure that the results give them some sort of positive return. I am not saying that they will necessarily falsify the evidence, although that may not be beyond the realm of possibility, but they will surely be sorely tempted to slant the results—if only for the sake of their commitment to what they see as the greater good. For instance, one person’s definition of bovine, ovine or avian distress might be another person’s idea of, say, satisfactory close family living. Therefore, it is essential that the welfare advisory body has the duty to audit and check up on these notifiers.

I know that the Government—any Government—have a priority to repel all boarders when it comes to amendments to their legislation, but I cannot see how or why they would want to tell the public that their new welfare advisory body would not have an obligation to check up on and satisfy itself that the notifier is conforming to the codes of practice set out in existing legislation. I am sure that the Government will tell us that this is not necessary—in fact, they have already done so—that there are other bodies involved, and that the notifiers already have an obligation. However, unless the welfare advisory body has a specific duty to check on and audit the notifier, it is quite possible that such persons or bodies could slip through the Met. Oh! That is not necessarily a Freudian slip—I mean “the net”, of course, but after last week’s revelations about rogue policemen I expect you can see how my mind is working. The welfare advisory body needs a specific duty spelled out in the legislation to ensure that there are no rogue notifiers.

I hope that the Government will see fit to accept this amendment, or undertake to discuss a positively worded government replacement amendment to be introduced at Third Reading, either for Amendment 19, to which I put my name, or Amendment 21, or indeed Amendment 22 in the next grouping. There has to be some give here on their part to persuade me, and I would like to think to persuade the House, that a vote on this matter of animal welfare is not necessary.

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, during the proceedings on the Bill—I spoke at Second Reading—it has been clear that some people, both inside and outside the House, do not want anything to do with genetics in terms of food production, and think that its application is anathema. I understand that and I do not blame them in the least, although I do not agree with it, but I have been looking at Amendment 21 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and I ask her whether she thinks that the provision in proposed new subsection (3)(b) might well give an opportunity for one of those people. Its wording is about progeny being

“likely to experience … lasting harm”

resulting from “faster growth” If you take that to its logical conclusion and encourage faster growth in an animal used in the meat trade, it is fairly clear that the animal will become suitable for slaughter at an earlier stage than if it had not had the influence of genetics. If you create faster growth by the application of genetics that ends up with the animal having a shorter life, is that not lasting harm? Some people could argue that, and I ask the noble Baroness if she would like to comment on that question.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I am not sure if this is the right moment to speak, but, in answer to the noble Lord’s specific question, the amendment is saying only that the welfare advisory body should take that into account. If there were other overriding reasons why we would want to have faster growth, for example, then that would be a balanced decision that it would make. However, if the faster growth were indeed leading to more pain, we hope it would take that into account. That is what the animal welfare role ought to be about. In Committee we heard lots of examples of new breeding techniques causing considerable pain, but I hope we are moving away from that now and can have a more generous attitude towards both conventional breeding and, potentially, the genetic breeding of animals where it does not have that effect. So it is all about the balance, and this is just one factor that the welfare advisory body will take into account.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Lord Jopling Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 21st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by drawing attention to my farming interest in the register. Like others who have spoken, my first comment is to welcome the Bill. I agreed enormously with the noble Lord, Lord Winston, when he said—I have put it into my own words—that we are doing what we should have done years ago. More years have passed than I am prepared to admit since I graduated in agricultural sciences. The teaching of genetics then, which had of course moved on some way from Gregor Mendel, could be described as the foothills of the science, practice and application of genetics compared with the towering peaks of genetic knowledge and application today.

Mercifully, however, I have had a number of refreshers in genetics since those days—the first was in the 1980s, when I was Minister of Agriculture. Noble Lords will remember that, in those days, the European Commission was faced with horrific surpluses of almost every agricultural product, which we could neither eat at home nor sell abroad. The Commission’s Luddite reaction was to discourage any new scientific procedures which could make those surplus mountains and lakes even larger. It did its best to discourage developments, particularly entry into the food chain of products created by genetic modification or by things such as hormone implants in animals to promote growth. On the latter, it even suppressed scientific assessments which it had commissioned itself because those studies could see no danger in proceeding. So, in those days, little progress was made in applying the new technology and the potential benefit from the emerging techniques of genetic modification. Somebody once said—I am not quite sure where—that it has become technically possible, with the knowledge of applying genetic techniques, to cross an elephant with an oak tree; I will come back to that in a minute. In the 1980s, the Commission’s actions very much stifled the fruits of science.

I had a further refresher in 1998 and 1999—shortly after I first became a Member of your Lordships’ House—when I was a member of the European Communities Sub-Committee D under the most distinguished chairmanship of the late Lord Reay. We produced a report entitled EC Regulation of Genetic Modification in Agriculture. Having studied the Commission’s stranglehold on the progress in this area, we concluded in paragraph 203, the final conclusion of the report:

“GMOs need to be regulated, at least until our knowledge develops further, but it would be extremely damaging if Europe’s access to this technology was subjected to inappropriate impediments”.


We are now discussing this welcome Bill, which introduces these necessary regulations to ensure that foodstuffs which have been altered through genetic techniques are safe.

However, at that time, we discovered that, in spite of the Commission’s Luddite attitudes, large quantities of genetically modified soya beans, maize and tomato pulp were already being imported into the European Community, particularly from the United States and other places where regulations could be described only as lax. Indeed, in our Select Committee report published in 1999, we said in paragraph 15:

“The enzyme Chymosin is identical to rennet and is produced by genetically modified yeasts or bacteria. It was introduced in commercial cheese-making in 1991 and is now used to manufacture 90 per cent. of hard cheeses”—


so much for the Commission’s restrictions back then.

The Bill is a worthy step in ensuring that the introduction of gene editing and other techniques will happen only with proper safeguards, but I have some concerns about the Bill. We are told that it covers genetic changes that could have occurred naturally or through traditional breeding methods. This clearly rules out our elephant and oak tree liaison, which I referred to earlier, but I can foresee some prolonged arguments as to whether the traditional processes or the natural transformations conditions apply. I think the noble Lord, Lord Winston, again, had the same anxiety as I have. So, will the Minister expand a little on the appeals procedure, because I can imagine many, many appeals about whether those conditions within the Bill are followed? For instance, modern wheats are created from mutations years ago, long before genetics was dreamed of—unlikely mutations, in those cases—which I can see could be the basis for arguments as to whether new products today are within the rulings of the Bill.

Finally, I recall a conversation I had in the early 1980s with Lord Rothschild, the former chairman of the Agricultural Research Council. He was wildly enthusiastic about the possibilities of using genetic techniques to attach to wheat plants the capacity of legumes—peas, beans and clovers, in this case—to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, thus providing nutrients for the wheat. On one hand, it would have dramatically increased wheat yields in exceptionally poorer land and would have had a massive effect on relieving poverty and hunger in less developed countries. On the other hand, it would also have reduced the demand for fertilisers and similar chemicals. I know that this particular research, which was entered into enthusiastically all those years ago, was too complicated to be fully developed and has slowed down, although I understand it still continues. I quote it as an example of a development that would or could be hugely beneficial to mankind.

I remember a similar development when I was Minister of Agriculture. Using public money, I bought—I cannot remember how many—perhaps about 10 Chinese pigs, much to the hysterical amusement of the Chinese Minister of Agriculture, because the department’s scientists knew that those pigs had an in-built capacity for very large litter sizes and they wanted to see if they could extract the gene and implant it into the traditional European pigs, which would have made them very much more productive. My point about this is that it seems a pity that the Bill gives no encouragement to these sorts of benefits because of the limits of the Bill, especially in Clause 1. Those rather glamorous developments, if I can put it that way, remain impossibilities. Will the Minister please comment on these sorts of possibilities and say some encouraging words about possible further steps in the future to embrace the influences for good that could lie ahead through much wider genetic modifications than those rather limited ones that appear in the Bill?

Genetically Modified Organisms (Deliberate Release) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2022

Lord Jopling Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, the point of regulation is to balance the benefits and any potential harms of a given process. This SI changes the regulation from a precautionary principle to an American proof of harm, a fundamental change enabled only because we have now left the European Union and are no longer subject to its positions on the precautionary principle. While we had many debates in this House on the then Agriculture Bill and the fact that the Government were maintaining the precautionary principle, we are going to have many debates where the use is very much qualified by the term “proportionate”. This is the first example where we are seeing just how proportionate everyone’s commitment to the precautionary principle is going to be. We can only worry what the Prime Minister’s promised Brexit freedoms Bill will deliver, when we see this being the first instance of what the precautionary principle actually means.

The question is whether the evidence is so overwhelming that it is right that the regulatory framework should be changed. While the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and others point to benefits, of which I am sure there are some, there are also harms. The question therefore is whether the balance is right. In the justification that the Government have given in the Explanatory Memorandum, they cite only ACRE principally as the scientific body. I am not sure that I would go so far as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, in questioning the motives and links of some of the people in ACRE, but it is but one body, and it is clear from the consultation itself that there is not unanimity among that scientific body.

We are signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which is brought together by biological and scientific experts around the world, and they say that, with regard to synthetic biology, nations should take a precautionary approach. The Convention on Biological Diversity says we should take a precautionary approach, yet the Government are saying that we will move to the American model of proof of harm. I notice that the Minister very carefully referred to the Americans but not to the European Union. While some may claim that the Europeans are looking to move, they have not moved yet. They are still fixed on not allowing this form of gene editing and, given that our biggest agricultural market is the European Union, it raises the question of where we are actually going to market these products in the long term.

But I do not want to repeat points that have already been made. I want to make two points. The first is that there is no public mandate for this. The Explanatory Memorandum, which gives figures for how many people respond to the government consultation, makes it absolutely clear that the public are overwhelmingly opposed and businesses are overwhelmingly opposed. The Government are setting off down a track where there is no market in the UK at present—and, as I just said, our biggest agricultural trading partner, if we were to go down this route in the future, does not allow it. So, the Government have a fundamental question to answer: where is their mandate for this?

Equally, if the Government say, as I suspect the Minister will, that they will be consulting with the public on this in the future, it seems odd to me to bring forward the regulatory framework without setting out first how to consult the public. It is as important, if not more important, at this opening stage in this salvo, that the Government are committed to labelling these products, if they are going to end up on the food markets in the future. You should not set off down a track without making a firm commitment to those members of the public who do not want this technology—and, as I said, the majority of people say they do not—that you are going to label this in the future. I would hope the Minister will be able to say in summing up that the Government are committed—if they are prepared to be open to this by changing the regulation today—to labelling. So my first point is around: where is the mandate for this?

My second point is, for me, a really powerful one. In this country, we are committed to environmental justice. We are signatories to the Aarhus convention, which gives members of the public the right to challenge decisions that have gone ahead at all stages in the future. In a democracy, things happen that people do not like, and that is fine. But, in order to be able to undertake that job of challenge, members of the public have to be able to have the information about trials and initiatives. Yet, going through the SI, looking at the prescribed information, I see we are getting away from all this information that used to be provided to the public. All we are going to be asking these companies to provide is the name, address, telephone number and email address of the person with overall responsibility for the project—nothing about the locale or location.

If I was doing my gardening on my allotment—after this SI goes through, as I am sure it will—I might want to find out why some of my crops might be changing their genetic formulation. Forgive me, I did my degree in theology, so my awareness of scientific terms is limited. But the basic point is that if you want to make a challenge, you need to know where it is. Yet under this SI, in the prescribed information, members of the public are not able to know where these are taking place. That seems contrary to our commitments under the Aarhus convention and, more importantly than that, our commitment to allow people to have environmental justice.

If this Government want this to go ahead, they should at least have the decency to allow people who oppose it in the future to have the information at their disposal to make their complaints. The wording in this SI does not give me confidence that people have the right to environmental justice that I think they should have in this country. It is for that reason, principally—although other matters are important too—that this SI fails to give people environmental justice, that I support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, I must begin by declaring my interests as a farmer and also by saying to your Lordships that I have some knowledge of the science, in that I have a degree in agriculture. In its final comment, the Select Committee said:

“The draft Regulations are drawn to the special attention of the House on the ground that they are politically or legally important and give rise to issues of public policy likely to be of interest to the House.


I agree with that so much. These are very important issues.

Years ago, soon after becoming a Member of your Lordships’ House, I was a member of a Select Committee chaired by that admirable chairman, the late Lord Reay. We did a study, which lasted for quite some time, on genetic modification. At the end of it, we shone a green light on continued development of the production of genetically modified crops and animals. But we also raised a very strong caveat that we had to be very careful not to go hell-bent on developing this science, because there were so many imponderables in it. The point of our committee’s report was that we ought to do everything we could to encourage the science to find out what was sensible to develop and what was dangerous to develop. One issue that I remember was over salmon, which had not been handled very well and which was dangerous. However, we acknowledged that the importance of genetic modification was something that one had to take very seriously.

Somebody made the point that I have often made, which is that, although some say that genetic modification is just a development of normal breeding, hybrid breeding and so on, it is not. Somebody—I forget who—made the point that this is the first time that we have been able as scientists to cross an elephant with an oak tree, putting it to its extremes. This is the first time that one could think of doing that, and so it is very important. Genetic modification could be crucial in dealing with some of the horrors which could lie ahead of us, of increasing world population, and of water shortage and climate change causing difficulties in food production. We are back to Malthus here. Genetic modification could become a very important tool in combating the possibilities—not the probabilities—of world starvation in the future.

I remember very well that, when I first became Minister of Agriculture, years ago in the 1980s, a very distinguished scientist told me that one of the great breakthroughs would be the possibility, through genetic engineering, of being able to amalgamate wheat with the capabilities of legume crops, which as we know extract nitrogen from the air, like clovers and other plants. The wheat itself could then extract nitrogen from the air. That was a possibility. It has not worked, but it is an example of what might have worked and might possibly work in the future. It is only science that will take us this way, and that is why these regulations are important and helpful. As my noble friend the Minister said, this encourages the scientists to develop these possibilities.

Agriculture Bill

Lord Jopling Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 10th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jopling (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I remind the House of my farming interests.

I must say that when I read the Bill I came to the conclusion that others have come to: I found it principally focused on environmental issues rather than farming issues. Of course I regard the environmental issues as vital; indeed, I remind the House that I was the first Minister ever to put agricultural chemicals under statutory control, and I was the instigator of the very successful environmentally sensitive area scheme that was later adopted throughout the CAP. However, this is an Agriculture Bill and, as others have said, it is, frankly, vague on the economic future of British agriculture.

I first worked in the industry as the 1947 Act was taking effect. I remind the House that it was introduced because, as a result of the war, we were perilously short of homegrown food—hence food rationing continued for many years after 1945. In the early 1970s, before we joined the EC, it was succeeded by support for the agricultural industry through tariffs on imports that matched the CAP arrangements that continue until today. Of course, that has been supplemented by the direct payments arrangements. It is strange that the objectives for agriculture in both the 1947 Act and the common agricultural policy bear significant similarities—the objectives of supporting food production and self-sufficiency—but the Bill, frankly, does not perpetuate these worthy aims.

True, the Government have committed to

“guarantee the current annual budget to farmers in every year of the Parliament.”

I welcome that—and ask the Minister if he will enlarge on that pledge—but after that period, at the end of the Parliament, the future is vague.

There is a question that worries me that I have been putting for four years. In our Brexit negotiations with the EU and other trading nations, we seem likely to move to a situation in which the industry is kicked in the teeth twice over, with the prospect of cheap foodstuffs being imported free of tariffs and, frankly, with dodgy safety guarantees. For instance, the Government tell me there is no scientific test to tell whether beef has been implanted with hormones, yet our post-Brexit exports to the European Union would have to jump its common external tariff.

Given this very serious double threat—together with the phasing out of the direct payments scheme, which is crucial to the farm incomes of a great number of farmers, particularly in the marginal and upland areas—it is hardly surprising that farmers view the future with anxiety and a sharp lack of confidence. The Government really must as soon as possible address this uncertainty and give us details of what the ELMS will provide. We need to know this now.