Agricultural Sector (EUC Report)

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I should like to record what a privilege it is for me to take on the chairmanship of this committee and what a privilege it is to have followed my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market, whose reputation, work and leadership on the committee were absolutely excellent.

This report is, in a way, the last of a series of “own initiative” reports, because at the moment we have a programme of Brexit reports which are taking up all our time. I hope that we are about to complete our report on fisheries, and that will be followed by reports on the environment, agriculture and energy security. I think that that will keep us busy for the next few months.

Without wanting it to sound as though too many congratulations are being expressed around the House, I was delighted to hear that the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, had become president of LEAF, an organisation for which I have huge regard, having seen some of its work in the past in Cornwall. I wish her well in that role.

Price volatility and natural disasters and events are part of agricultural life. As the noble Baroness mentioned, in the south-west, where I have my home, we are again experiencing a series of floods, which affect the agricultural community even more than many other sectors of society.

Intervention used to be one way in which the European Communities dealt with price volatility. My business career was in supply chain management and the freight industry. I remember operating a cold store in the 1980s. We had some space in it which our contracted customers were not using, so we thought that we would put in a pitch for a bit of European intervention storage. The great thing was that we got a fantastic revenue boost from that, but that was not all, because a full cold store is far cheaper to operate than a half-empty one, so we saved costs as well. I express a public thank-you to the 1980s European taxpayer for the great amount of money that we made out of that. That is why that system had to end as a regular feature. We all remember the wine lakes, the butter mountains and the intervention milk powder that occurred at that time.

However, as my noble friend Lady Scott said, at the moment there is some emergency intervention, which has been approved by the Government. The Minister, George Eustice, came back to the committee and referred to this report, and some of the intervention money will be used in some of the more creative intervention ways. Therefore, I think that the committee has already had a success in that area, and I welcome the Government’s response in that regard. I shall not talk at great length on this issue because, although it is important, it is not my report.

I particularly liked the move towards innovation in the report. I had not even thought about the financial instruments that could be used. They may be limited, but it is important that managers in the agricultural sector think in that way, as having those tools is very important.

Management in this area, as in any business, is absolutely crucial. One particularly important thing that I have certainly seen in Devon and Cornwall is not just management and management plans, which can be very dry, but the ability to understand and deliver marketing and to understand added value, as well as the ability to find niches in markets. It is important not to be an accepter of prices for commodities within agriculture but to produce products that are special and are of added value to consumers. That is one of the key areas where there is still much to be learned.

As my noble friend said, Brexit has come through since the report was published, and there will be huge challenges. I cannot believe that we will have regular area payments much beyond 2020. I cannot see British taxpayers putting up with that system as it is at the moment. It will just have to change—the pressures will be too great—and this report is even more important in that context. Regrettably, we may not be able to take advantage of the European Investment Bank. I hope that we will, although I cannot see that we will be a shareholder and have board membership of the EIB. However, I hope that there will still be ways in which we can exercise those funds.

We really do have a challenge as we move agriculture beyond the European Union, but I think it is one area where there are huge opportunities for improvement in the Brexit settlement. That will be the subject of a report of this committee, on which I look forward to the contribution from my fellow members in due course.