Agriculture Bill

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 16th July 2020 Lords Chamber

Amendments 103 and 104 not moved.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 105. I remind noble Lords that anyone wishing to speak after the Minister should email the clerk during the debate. Anyone wishing to press this, or any other, amendment in this group to a Division should make that clear in the debate.

Amendment 105

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for introducing so clearly his amendment and for speaking to other amendments in the group. The issues raised in my amendments refer back to Clause 1. I feel rather mean about doing that, having seen the fairly rapturous smiles on the faces of those on the Government Front Bench when it was agreed that the clause should stand part of the Bill, but I am afraid that that is where the radical stuff is; it is that simple. Clause 1 is where we have the statement that there will be quite a fundamental change to the way that some aspects of the countryside and agriculture are financed. The two amendments in my name refer to Clauses 4 and 5, covering planning and monitoring.

Let us talk about access again because that is what I have talking about, although the environment and agriculture are equally important—for others they are probably more so. If we are to have a plan that seeks to improve access, we need to monitor that and go back to review it. If the Minister can tell us how that is to be done, we will know about it and it will become more real—firmer, if you like. Is a new footpath to be just another line drawn somewhere, with money claimed for doing that, but then it is ploughed up and cannot be used for six months of the year? If a hard surface to stop people trampling over the rest of the field and ensuring a higher level of disabled accessibility is the plan, how will that be reported on?

Amendment 138 may be the more important of the two amendments because it covers reporting back on how things are working. We are going into new territory here. It is almost inevitable that some of the schemes will not work and that some will not be as successful as others. How do we find out how the plans are supposed to be implemented and how do we report back on them? That is very important.

It may be that the Minister has a wonderful answer waiting for me that will mean that I and people outside can totally relax about this, but we should be able to hear about it. With these schemes, with their cultural heritage and so on, you have to know that when you pump money in you will get something back for it— public money for public goods—and in order to know that, we need a better guide through this reporting process.

The farmer—the person who has to change their practices—needs to know as well. They are the implementation system, unless there is going to be a new clause containing a new agency to do it for us. Pigs flying would happen more frequently than that in the current environment, so it is the farmer who is going to have to do the work, or at least the vast majority of it. Knowing how this will be implemented is what we are trying to get at here, or at least what I am trying to get at. Other colleagues have their names to these amendments and they may well have their own takes.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

After the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, I will be calling the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott of Needham Market and Lady McIntosh of Pickering, who were omitted from the original speakers’ list.

[Lord Northbrook (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 126 in this group. I declare my interest as a landowner and arable farmer. Echoing what would be achieved by my Amendments 56, 60 and 69, this amendment would ensure that the requirement for the Secretary of State to have regard to the need to encourage the production of food by producers in England, and its production in an environmentally sustainable way, when framing any financial assistance schemes was explicitly taken into account in the development of the multiannual financial assistance plans required under Clause 4.

In earlier remarks on domestic food production support, the Minister said, if I understood correctly, that food production did not need financial support because this came to the farmer, who had a profit from the sale of his produce. However, in my view, this argument does not cover the situation where, for instance, dairy farmers sell their milk at a loss, or where farmers would like financial support to invest in new buildings, machinery, processes, new crops or different species of livestock, particularly when these take some years to develop. I believe that the scope of multiannual assistance plans set out in Clause 4 should be expanded to include the above. I ask the Minister for her views on this.