Agricultural Sector (EUC Report)

Lord Selkirk of Douglas Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selkirk of Douglas (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Trees, who has enormous knowledge of this area, perhaps stemming from his experience as a professor of veterinary medicine. Perhaps I may say that it is also a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, who has put so much of her valuable expertise into this report. I declare an interest as the chairman and director of a small family company which owns a number of fields and currently has an interest in possibly one wind turbine. In this capacity I receive a small annual salary.

I start by mentioning that at present there are somewhere in the region of 476,000 employees in the agricultural sector and other closely related areas of work, which is a substantial figure. As well as helping to provide us with a supply of safe and nutritious food, farmers also play an extremely important role in the way our land, the wider environment and the rural economy are managed. Last year, CAP payments to the United Kingdom totalled around £3 billion. After the referendum result, as has been mentioned, the Chancellor promised in August that the Government would replace any financial shortfall suffered by farmers as a result of leaving the EU until the end of the decade. However, farmers will need continuing reassurance that the Government are working on a plan that will give them reliable support into the next decade and beyond. There is also the issue of access to the single market and to the migrant labour on which many farmers depend.

In their response to our report, the Government said that it was premature to comment on what a future package of measures would look like. However, can the Minister give us an assurance that the Government will honour the commitment given by the Prime Minister that British farming, which they described in their response as,

“the bedrock of the food and drink industry”,

will remain profitable, competitive and resilient?

Perhaps I may press the Minister on two aspects of future policy planning which came to the fore as the Energy and Environment Sub-Committee took evidence on how to create a more resilient agricultural sector and formed the series of recommendations contained in the report. I want to concentrate on a subject mentioned also by the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, and the noble Lord, Lord Trees: the call for more efficient ways to spread knowledge gained from research throughout our farming communities. This involves the important issues of benchmarking against external criteria and improved delivery of IT services such as broadband throughout the country. The report recommends:

“The UK Government should identify examples of best practice of knowledge exchange and dissemination wherever it is to be found and actively support them”.

The inquiry found that facilities for the exchange of knowledge and training differed throughout the UK. On page 51 of the report, the committee states that it was impressed by the knowledge exchange services offered by Scotland’s Rural College, which encompasses many campuses within Scotland. The college combines research, education and consultation for rural clients.

Can the Minister report on what progress is being made in this area so as to ensure that when research produces results that could benefit the wider farming community it can be swiftly and effectively broadcast and used to help establish best practice? Is enough encouragement being given to the farming community to promote benchmarking? The report states:

“There is a long term business case for equipping farmers in all parts of the UK with the knowledge and expertise to calculate and manage their costs of production and overheads. Farmers should share their data with their peers to facilitate this benchmarking”.

During the committee’s inquiry we were told that Defra was working on a 25-year plan dealing with food and farming and on another, separate 25-year plan covering the environment. Other evidence received by the committee stressed that agricultural and environmental matters are strongly interlinked. The Minister at Defra, George Eustice MP, agreed that the agriculture plan would touch on environmental matters but said that the environmental plan was,

“the right place to deal with all the environmental issues, including looking at things such as soil, climate change, water resources and everything else”.

However, the committee came to the conclusion that, given the significant connections and interaction between agriculture and the environment, these two policy areas should not be treated as separate entities. It was concerned that there appeared to be insufficient understanding of the way in which the two areas were interconnected and of the value of natural capital, meaning the world’s stock of natural assets such as soil, air, water and all living things.

As a result of the referendum, we realise that there will have to be a pause in work on the 25-year plans. The Government have said that they will now take stock and consider any new arrangements. I note that in their response to the report they say that agriculture and environment policies are interconnected. Notwithstanding the change in circumstances, can the Minister assure us, in so far as he is able to today, that it will still be possible for the Government and Defra to continue to proceed on the basis of developing a highly desirable unified approach to the extremely important areas of agriculture and the environment?