Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Morris of Aberavon and Duke of Montrose

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

[Lord Morris of Aberavon [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 106, which I support in spirit. It is good to see my noble friend Lord Rooker back, and I look forward to sitting next to him when the House resumes in its proper role.

I will be very brief and will ask the Minister a question. We know that under the CAP system, as I understand it, there is no restriction as regards the receivers of EU money. I believe that this is untenable in the future. The amendment sets out new limitations to confine financing assistance to those actively engaged in farming or land management. I support the spirit, as I said, but the amendment may need redrafting. There is no other justification for spending taxpayers’ money. I ask the Minister specifically: will there be any restrictions or limitations on who payments will be made to in future under the Bill?

[The Duke of Montrose (Con) [V]]

My Lords, forgive me if I turn off the video, because my signal is very poor. I declare my interests as in the register; my background is in livestock production in a hill area. As a Scottish farmer, I am particularly interested in the outcome of the devolution framework negotiation.

I was interested to hear my noble friend Lord Marlesford saying that we must emphasise the context in which we are. Behind it all, we have to bear in mind that as a country at present we should go out and buy exotic food or cheap food as and where we can find it, but we need to remember the warnings in the Beddington report that before too long these other parts of the world will need most of what they produce to feed themselves.

The Bill as it stands already opens up 10 headings of activities or causes for which the Government propose to offer financial assistance. Many noble Lords have tried to define a more focused approach to the payments. The noble Earl, Lord Devon, told us of his rationale for focusing only on agriculture and how he envisages rural support to be directed. I was interested to hear that he had drawn his definition of land from an EU definition.

In Amendment 64 the noble Earl envisages limiting the land eligible for assistance by the type of activity it supports, but those of your Lordships who have been involved in existing support schemes will be familiar with the difficulties that were dreamed up when the rules were made in Brussels to start to try to make clear what was agricultural land, starting off with a mapping exercise. Very many in my part of the world had to spend a great deal of time identifying what were rocky outcrops, patches of impenetrable scrub, bracken or bog on a field-by-field basis. I seem to remember that Northern Ireland faced a huge fine for claiming on areas with these conditions. I am glad to see that in Amendment 91 in the previous group, the noble Earl added a role for managing wetlands as part of cultural or natural heritage.

Following on from my noble friend Lord Randall’s concern, many noble Lords have drawn attention to what the EU now describes as “areas of natural constraint”. There would be a problem if we went solely down the line of production. There is a difficulty in dealing with the more awkward parts of what, in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, was described as

“mountain, moor, heath or down”.

Some of these areas support agricultural production but, since the advent of the current basic payment scheme, some areas have no livestock on them at all. They are perhaps given over to conservation or peatland restoration. Are these to be excluded from any development assistance as we go forward?

As I said, many amendments are trying to direct more defined targets for funding. As we go forward, it will be interesting to see whether any wording will be found that will be acceptable to my noble friend the Minister.