Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group. Amendments 5, 17 and 89 question the different wording in different sections of the Bill. Clause 1(1)(a) uses “protects or improves”; Clause 1(1)(c) uses “maintains, restores or enhances”; elsewhere, “conserves” is used, which is defined as including “restoring or enhancing”.

Using different words in close proximity in the Bill gives the strong impression that different things are meant by them and that words which are not included each time are therefore in some way excluded. For simplicity of reading, we should choose one word. I would choose “enhances”; I have gone with “conserves” because that is the Government’s choice. If we have one word which is defined to encompass all the other concepts, this clause will read more clearly.

With Amendments 27 and 28, I wish to check with the Government that we are not confining ourselves to additional varieties and species, but that we will be able to apply funds to new species of animal livestock and in particular to new plant crop species. Genetic engineering should mean that we can move many of the crops that now grow some way south of us a good way north and therefore improve the resilience and variety of our agriculture.

Amendment 86 checks where the boundary is for an activity such as coppicing. It was not clear to me from the words used that the whole process of felling trees and particularly extracting them from woodland could be covered by finance. If we are going to make it profitable for small woods in particular—I declare an interest in owning one—to supply coppice for the power station industry, for instance, we must look at how we will get that wood extracted. If not, there will be no benefit in extracting it and therefore no benefit in coppicing.

Lastly and most importantly, Amendment 76 addresses local nature partnerships. In the Bill we ought ideally to recognise the role that these have come to play in the negotiations between the various entities which have a finger in the pie of looking after nature in our countryside. They have been remarkably successful and I very much hope we will continue to support them and embed them in how we take decisions about nature and the countryside.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, in speaking to my three amendments, I take this opportunity to thank the Minister, the Bill team and everybody for getting us to this stage. It is quite remarkable that we have a book of amendments almost as large as the Bill itself. I know the lengths to which my noble friend will go to accommodate us.

I will speak first to Amendments 24 and 104 in my name. I thank other noble Lords who have joined me in signing Amendment 24, which is for probing and debating purposes only. Obviously, I do not wish to see land taken out of “managing land or water” that will benefit from new financial assistance under the Bill. I am grateful to my noble friend, who is responding today, and to our noble friend Lord Goldsmith for responding to my concerns, which I have also set out in Amendment 104.

There will be opportunities for farmers to create reservoirs, working either on their own or with water companies. This will be recognised as financial assistance, other than where they may already fall within a flood plain, which I think is the one exclusion. My noble friend said that the equivalent of 25 Olympic-sized pools would fall within the provisions of the Reservoirs Act 1975.

We are absolutely delighted to have the Slowing the Flow at Pickering scheme. I am sure that many other schemes like it will benefit from the provisions of this Bill. I welcome that. It could be not just for farm use, but caravan parks and golf clubs may consider storing water temporarily or more permanently on their land. However, could my noble friend be a little more precise? In my noble friend Lord Goldsmith’s reply to me in a letter on 2 July, he said:

“The temporary storage of floodwater on land would not necessarily constitute a raised reservoir and would therefore be exempt from reservoir safety regulations in England.”


It would be helpful if my noble friend could place that letter in the Library so that I do not need to refer to it in any more detail. Could we have an assurance today on what will be considered temporary storage and what permanent storage, to reassure those seeking to retain water temporarily as floodwater that they will not fall within the provisions of the 1975 Act, which are particularly onerous for reservoirs and would reduce it to 10,000 cubic metres?

Further, the reservoir we had initially sought for the Slowing the Flow scheme could not be signed off by the panel engineer from the Institution of Civil Engineers. Can my noble friend assure the House today that even water stored temporarily to retain floodwater on land will not fall into that category? That would be most helpful.

Amendment 24 relates to financial assistance for upland and hill farms in particular, which produce pasture-fed livestock. There are concerns that hill farmers may not benefit because many of them are tenants. In North Yorkshire and other parts, I think almost 50% of farms are tenanted. Later we will consider county council farms, which are almost exclusively tenanted farms by their very nature. This is a probing amendment to see whether my noble friend would be minded to use financial assistance to promote pasture-fed livestock farming systems. It is something that we are particularly good at in the United Kingdom, in parts of northern England, Scotland, Devon and, I am sure, Wales and other parts as well. The taste of the spring lamb off the North Yorkshire moors is hard to beat but that is not why we are here today.

Pasture-fed livestock farming is responsible for the management of a significant part of our landscape. The national parks have done a great piece of work on this, which we will come on to consider. But it is particularly important in this regard to seek financial assistance for the way the uplands are managed. Too often, calves and other animals that are fattened on the pastures come in for unnecessary and unwanted attacks from interest groups which perhaps do not understand how red meat is produced and how important it is to a balanced diet. The uplands also play a role as a carbon sink—storing carbon in the grasslands—and in harvesting carbon from the atmosphere on an ongoing basis. Given the wider benefits of pasture-fed systems, I urge the Government to address this sector within the realm of public goods, under Clause 1(1).

I make it clear that this is complementary to and supportive of the provisions on native breeds, whether on pasture or other systems. I acknowledge that native breeds are probably already recognised, so I nudge my noble friend towards considering that pasture-fed livestock also come under the provision, for biodiversity and public health reasons as well.