Agriculture: Regulation

Lord Rogan Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rogan]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, for initiating this timely debate. Agriculture is a devolved matter, but we are speaking about British agriculture, and I trust that a few words and examples from Ulster are germane to the wider debate. Although it has been many years since agriculture was a mainstay of the British economy, even in a rural region such as Northern Ireland it is still an important source of employment and wealth creation. Indeed, during the recent recession and ongoing economic turmoil, Northern Ireland's agri-food sector has been one of the few industries to continue to grow and prosper. It has grown and prospered despite the best efforts of regulators in Belfast, London and Brussels to smother it in red tape.

Ridding the sector of unnecessary and burdensome bureaucracy is, as we have discovered in Northern Ireland, no easy task. We do not need a bonfire of red tape; rather, we need to adopt that robust, age-old farming practice of slash and burn. Two years ago, after not inconsiderable effort, the Ulster Farmers Union welcomed a report from the Better Regulation Task Force, a creation of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which was apparently going to stop the pernicious spread of farm bureaucracy. In particular, there were concerns about burdens caused by farm inspections, the single farm payment scheme, the administrative stress induced by TB policies, and the stupefying complexity of guidance notes and terms and conditions issued to farmers for every scheme and regulation imaginable under the sun. What, you may wonder, happened to such laudable ambitions? What, indeed. One year later, the Ulster Farmers Union was bemoaning the abject absence of action by Northern Ireland's Department of Agriculture. Despite having accepted nearly all the recommendations identified the year before, the department was making slow headway in actually removing any red tape. Indeed, the most tangible outcome appears to have been the creation of that great oxymoron of government, the working group, to consider further action.

Talk, as they say, is cheap, and farmers in Northern Ireland want action, not words. They had been promised that the administrative burden on farmers and agri-food businesses would reduce by 25 per cent by 2013, saving them upwards of £15 million in the process. I rather fear that they will have to wait somewhat longer. There is nothing sedate or comfortable about the fiercely competitive market in which farmers operate; we are all part of the global village, with every possible foodstuff available in and out of season. There is no fat in the industry and no capacity to carry unnecessary administrative burdens. I commend the noble Baroness for securing the debate and encourage those responsible for regulating to pause before putting pen to paper and to consider the anxiety and annoyance that they spread in farmhouses throughout the length and breadth of the British Isles.