Rural Payments Agency: Basic Payment Scheme

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I congratulate the Minister on taking decisive action and avoiding the disaster that the previous Government oversaw in 2006-07, when only 15% of farmers were paid on time. I congratulate him on listening to the National Farmers Union, the Country Land and Business Association and other groups that have made representations and on making sure that we find a system that operates and allows farmers to be paid.

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes a good point; the Labour party did not grip the problems with the RPA, so there was over £600 million of disallowance and farmers were often paid over a year late—as he said, only 15% were paid on time.

Anti-freeze Products (Protection of Animals)

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

When MPs stand up to speak, it is traditional for them to say that they are delighted to give a particular speech, but I can honestly say that on this occasion I am not delighted to be here. I would rather not be discussing this issue at all.

We have had a traumatic summer in Sherwood. Calverton, a village in my constituency in Nottinghamshire, has to our knowledge suffered the loss of at least 22 cats due to poisoning with anti-freeze. Most of those losses were in the month of August, and people tend not to use anti- freeze in the middle of a heat wave; it is something they consider using at this time of year, when their car could become frozen. However, anyone malicious who wants to cause harm to animals—wildlife or cats—can use anti-freeze intentionally to cause an enormous amount of devastation. The product can also cause that devastation accidentally.

I am grateful for the support of Nottinghamshire police and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in trying to catch the perceived perpetrator of those poisonings. At this moment in time we are no closer to catching an individual who may be acting maliciously in that way, but we are working hard to educate the public in and around Nottinghamshire and to make sure that people are on the lookout for anybody doing something suspicious or inappropriate.

I will outline the issue. Anti-freeze contains a product called ethylene glycol. It tastes quite sweet to small animals, and to mammals in particular, but it is extremely toxic when consumed even in small doses. Once EG has been consumed it is difficult to prevent the animal from dying because it is so toxic. It forms very small crystals in the kidneys, leading rapidly to kidney failure, then death. The moments between consumption and death are very traumatic for the animal, and owners of pets—cats or dogs—see unpleasant symptoms, such as vomiting, diarrhoea and extreme stomach cramps. Indeed, it is one of the worst ways in which a pet can lose its life. The trauma that that causes families and individuals, particularly families with small children who have become attached to the family pet, cannot be overstated.

We might think that such poisoning is a rare occurrence and that Calverton’s loss of 22 cats is a one-off—some individual in the village is causing trouble, but it does not happen anywhere else. Well, to my surprise that is not true. After putting our issue on social media and in the local press, I was inundated on Facebook and Twitter with messages from people all over the country who are experiencing similar issues and are concerned that their pets have been injured in that way. Cats Protection told me that it has been monitoring the media since November 2012 and is aware of 1,197 reports of such poisoning elsewhere in the country. That equates to 50 deaths a month, or more than a cat and a half—if we could have a cat and a half—a day suffering that terrible trauma. That sends a simple message to us as a Government: we have to do something to help and to try to prevent that from happening.

A lot of the debate on forums and on social media is about a product called Bitrex, which makes products such as anti-freeze very bitter and unpalatable. Bitrex makes anti-freeze so unpalatable that one very small taste or sniff would prevent an animal—and we are not just talking about cats and dogs; it could be hedgehogs or other small mammals in our countryside—from consuming it at all. If someone was malicious enough to try to mix such a product with chicken or tuna, the bitter taste would remain in the anti-freeze and, we hope, would prevent a pet from consuming it.

I ask the Minister and his Department for four specific things. First, will he explore the mandatory inclusion of Bitrex in anti-freeze for purchase in the UK? It is possible to buy anti-freeze and other products that already contain Bitrex, and some reputable retailers sell only those anti-freeze products that contain it. However, other retailers sell the quality products but also a cheaper version, at 50p less per bottle, next to them on the shelf. We should look seriously at making manufacturers include Bitrex in all anti-freeze products available in the UK.

I also urge the Minister to talk to his colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills who can ask the manufacturers of such products—anti-freeze screenwash and also anti-freeze for radiators—to look at manufacturing alternatives that do not contain ethylene glycol. There are products out there available for purchase that do the same job but do not contain that toxic chemical. Of course, they are more expensive, which can mean retailers are not over-enthusiastic about stocking them, but that price is worth paying if we can prevent animals from suffering in the way that they currently do.

Thirdly, we should encourage better labelling on bottles, so that members of the public are aware of how toxic anti-freeze can be to small mammals. If someone is draining their radiator, or it springs a leak, and it is filled with an anti-freeze product, they should be informed about how toxic the product is to animals. I have been told by professionals that if a cat were to walk through a spillage of neat anti-freeze, get it on its paws, then go home and lick its paws clean, that would unfortunately be enough to lead to its death. Fourthly, and just as importantly, we should educate the general public so that we are all aware of the issue.

I do not intend to detain hon. Members much longer. The message is very simple: this is an enormous problem that leads to a great deal of trauma, not only for the animal but for those people who lose their pet in this way. I implore the Minister to encourage his Department to look at the issue seriously. I pay tribute to Blue Cross for Pets, Cats Protection and the RSPCA for their support on this issue. I am sure that this will not be the last occasion on which the Minister hears about the topic but I hope that in the near future we will be able to save pet cats, dogs and small mammals from suffering this most traumatic of deaths.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

The hon. Lady makes a good point and I will come back to it. Ultimately, if anti-freeze included a bittering agent and if that deterred animals from taking anti-freeze in any circumstances, that still would not deal with the problem of people deliberately setting out to poison cats and other animals. They would simply find a different weapon of choice. We must recognise that and be very clear first and foremost that when deliberate poisoning takes place, that is a clear breach of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and we should prosecute accordingly.

[Mr Spencer]

I am pleased to hear of the £20,000 fine and the six months’ imprisonment, although I am not sure that they are high enough. There are products on the market to deter cats; some squirt jets of water or emit a sound wave that distracts cats. There is no excuse in any way, shape or form for causing an animal harm when there are products that move them on or send them to a different property.

[George Eustice]

I could not agree more. The deliberate poisoning of cats is indefensible. It is a crime and should be punished as such.

It is too early to tell whether the poisoning was intentional in the case in my hon. Friend’s constituency. To avoid accidental poisoning, it is vital that people are careful when handling and storing poisonous products, particularly around children and animals. They should be especially careful when pouring poisonous liquids, which can spill easily. As my hon. Friend said, it does not take much anti-freeze to get on the paws of a cat and become hazardous. Anyone using products labelled as hazardous or poisonous should read the manufacturer’s instructions before using them and take note of the warning labels.

Anti-freeze and windscreen de-icer are a necessary part of our everyday lives, particularly at this time of year, but people must take great care when handling and disposing of them. Poisonous liquids that have spilt on the ground may seem innocuous, but animals, whether domestic or wild, may find them attractive, or at least be curious to try them.

A third phenomenon that I have been made aware of and which has the potential to cause poisoning—my hon. Friend did not touch on this—is that some people may be using anti-freeze in their garden water features to stop them freezing up in winter. There are reports of that and internet chat forums discussing whether that is sensible. It could result in animals, whether pets or wildlife, being inadvertently poisoned. We do not know for sure whether that is a cause of poisoning, but it could be; that caused me some concern when investigating the matter ahead of the debate.

Anyone in doubt about whether a household product is particularly toxic to animals should consult their vet or ask the RSPCA or groups such as Cats Protection. Many organisations provide helpful advice on their websites about animals and anti-freeze, and that is to be applauded. Their role in raising public awareness is important.

In common with most chemical products supplied for domestic use, anti-freeze is covered by the Chemicals (Hazard Information and Packaging for Supply) Regulations 2009—the CHIP regulations. They are being replaced from the beginning of January 2015 by the EU classification, labelling and packaging of substances and mixtures regulation. The CHIP and CLP regulations require suppliers of dangerous chemicals and products containing those chemicals to give information about the potential hazards to their customers. That is usually provided on the packaging.

Ethylene glycol, which is the chemical causing the problem, is the main ingredient of most anti-freeze. Manufacturers must label the product as a health hazard, which means placing the exclamation mark pictogram, which is replacing the current black “X” on an orange background, on the label. They must also include the following risk and safety phrases: “Harmful if swallowed” and “Keep out of the reach of children”. The regulations are enforced by local authority trading standards and are the responsibility of the Health and Safety Executive, an agency of the Department for Work and Pensions. The product is clearly labelled “Harmful if swallowed” so there is no excuse for people who use it inappropriately. They should take great care in how they handle it.

The classification of ethylene glycol, and hence the legally required hazard warning, is determined by its toxicity to humans, so it would not be appropriate to impose a stricter warning. However, the regulations allow manufacturers of anti-freeze to add supplementary information on the label as long as it does not contradict the legally required phrases and is placed separately from them. It would be possible for the labels on anti-freeze to warn about the particular risk to pets, for example, and to make it clear that it would not be right to use it in garden water features. That might be a step forward. Many domestic products for use around the home can be harmful to animals and measures to control them must be proportionate and targeted.

My hon. Friend called for manufacturers to be required to add bittering agents, such as Bitrex, but some people who have followed the debate closely have asked whether that would be effective. Cats Protection, which he cited, wrote to the Government earlier this year pointing out that although some people have called for the addition of a bittering agent to anti-freeze, research in the United States has cast doubt on whether it would be entirely effective and suggested that it would not necessarily deter children from ingesting it.

Cats Protection also said that the same research had shown that ingestion of ethylene glycol by dogs and rats tended to be influenced more by a motivational state, such as hunger, rather than by its sweetness. Adding a bittering agent is not necessarily a solution in itself, but it is an interesting suggestion and my hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight it.

I would encourage manufacturers to consider the case for adding bittering agents on a voluntary basis. I am aware that at least one high-street retailer—Halfords—already includes Bitrex in all its branded products. However, I understand that adding ingredients could cause problems related to, for example, the effectiveness of the product and it may have some impacts on the vehicle. The debate is not straightforward, but I would nevertheless encourage manufacturers to consider what my hon. Friend has said today.

Finally, to come back to a point made earlier, we have to bear in mind that if the case that my hon. Friend mentioned involved deliberate poisoning, no amount of bittering agents or caution by people using anti-freeze would get away from that fact. If that happened in the Calverton case, it is very important that we have a rigorous investigation and that the perpetrators are brought to justice.

We have had an interesting discussion. I will draw this debate to the attention of my noble Friend Lord de Mauley, who is the portfolio holder for these issues, because my hon. Friend has raised some important points and made some very interesting suggestions.

Question put and agreed to.

Control of Horses Bill

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Friday 24th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

That is something that may be considered when the Bill is, I hope, enacted.

The animal welfare codes recommend that a horse that is being kept should be tended to at least once a day to check that its welfare needs are met. We feel that the 24-hour notice period is reasonable because the legitimate owner of an animal would realise that they did not have the animal quite quickly. If the police are notified within 24 hours and there is a four-working-day period of detention, it will enable them to reunite the legitimate owners of a horse with their animal.

In common with the 1971 Act, when a detained horse is sold and there is money left over from the sale, any excess money, after the costs of the sale and of keeping the horse are deducted, can be claimed by the horse owner. For the most part, the horses that we are talking about will probably be of such low value that it is unlikely that there will be any money left after the sale.

The final element that I want to touch on relates to the concerns of welfare charities about the ambiguity of the definition of “stray” horses. Although the position has never been tested in the courts, the Bill seeks to address the concern that the 1971 Act is not designed to deal with deliberately placed horses. Clarifying the definition by making it clear that it includes horses that are there without legal authority is an important step forward.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

I hope that consideration will be given in Committee to areas such as Exmoor and Dartmoor, with which the Minister is familiar, where there are wild ponies. How will one distinguish between animals that are being fly-grazed and wild herds?

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend may well have the opportunity to raise those points as the Bill progresses.

The Bill represents an important step forward in promoting more responsible standards of horse ownership. It will uphold the need for owners to pay proper attention to their horses’ welfare and to avoid the burdens that fly-grazing imposes on public safety and private and public property.

I want to return to a point that I raised in the last debate on this subject. We must not lose sight of the potential to use the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 to deal with this issue. In addition to the changes that the Bill will make to the 1971 Act, it is possible for local authorities to use a more streamlined antisocial behaviour measure under the 2014 Act, which came into force only this week. Local authorities and the police can issue a community protection notice against fly-grazers without having to apply to the courts. As my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer said, we recognise that in most cases the owner of the fly-grazing horse would have to be known, and in many cases that is not possible to establish without some form of investigation. To return to the point that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough made, however, it is important that we do something about owners who abdicate their responsibility and neglect their horses. The Bill will give local authorities the ability to pursue irresponsible horse owners. Two prolific and persistent fly-grazers have recently been issued with antisocial behaviour orders under the old-style measures, so although we accept that there are difficulties, we still believe that we should act.

Finally, I return to the extension of the Bill’s provisions to private land, which several Members have mentioned. Bearing in mind the significant effect of fly-grazing on private land, the Government support such an extension, which would be consistent with the scope of the 1971 Act. It will require the approval of the House for amending the scope and long title of the Bill, but given the importance of doing so, the Government are happy to support that on this occasion. Such amendments would give private landowners and occupiers the benefits of the changes to the 1971 Act that local authorities will gain in respect of public places. I can confirm that we will therefore table a motion to direct the Public Bill Committee that it can consider amendments to the Bill that would enable its provisions to apply on private land.

I believe that the changes will be welcomed by local authorities, landowners and the animal welfare charities that have done much to highlight the issue in recent years. I congratulate again my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer, who looks set to be more successful with his private Member’s Bill than I was with mine some years ago. I am happy to confirm the Government’s support for the Bill, and I wish him the very best of luck in taking it through Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Public Bill Committee (Standing Order No. 63).

Common Agricultural Policy

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Lady is right. Newcastle university estimates that the average income of a farmer in my constituency is £11,000 a year. Many of them are on working tax credits—or were on them under the previous Government, but I am not sure how many of them are still getting the working tax credits.

The Select Committee report is excellent on the major problem such hill farmers face, which is to do with delivery: the totally inadequate service that the farmers receive from the Rural Payments Agency because of the requirement to apply for money online and because the system is constantly collapsing. The Select Committee report states at paragraph 34 that

“farmers can be heavily penalised for a genuine mistake but not appropriately compensated when it is the Rural Payments Agency who is in error.”

What has happened repeatedly in recent months is that the farmers have gone to upload their data and information, and the RPA computer system has been down, necessitating the farmers to go home and come back another day. That is absolutely absurd. Sometimes they have a round trip of 20 miles to access the computer in the UTASS centre in Middleton in Teesdale. When the system is down, they have wasted several hours and have to go back another day in the vain hope it will be up again. I wrote to the Minister about this, and I really think he should not be penalising the farmers when the RPA is at fault.

The next extremely pertinent recommendation from the Select Committee is recommendation 36, which states:

“The IT system remains, however, one of the standout challenges of this round…Given the lessons of the past we question whether this is the right time to be introducing a new IT system.”

How very right the Committee is. It is not just about a new IT system, with all the risks, complexities and problems that a new system always seems to entail in this country; one of my local farmers calculated that because DEFRA’s systems are so complex, and because he has to apply to so many different things and for each system he is meant to have a different authentication, he is supposed to remember 27 different personal identification numbers. This is absurd. This is grotesque. This is Kafkaesque. I find it difficult to remember my bank number and the number to get into the House of Commons, so how can these farmers, whose real job is farming up on the hill, be expected also to run the sort of complex IT system that would make a banker blench?

The Select Committee’s next point, which is absolutely right, was about the importance of encouraging and supporting people to apply online but realising that

“there will be some for whom such an approach is not appropriate. A paper-based application process must be retained”.

That is absolutely essential. Once upon a time, the farmers got the forms through the post, sat at their kitchen table, had a cup of tea, filled the forms out, put the stamp on the envelope, shoved it in the post box and, boom, the whole thing was done. Now that is not possible and the farmers have to drive to the library or the UTASS centre to get help with the uploading.

The whole thing is completely inefficient because, as recommendation 38 indicates, the rural broadband programme has not succeeded so far. We know that 5 million people in this country do not have access to broadband. Until 100% of people have access to broadband, how can it make sense to have a totally online approach and not have a paper-based approach alongside it? In my constituency, 40% of the farmers have no access to rural broadband, so DEFRA and the RPA are taking an absurd approach. It is essential to maintain a paper-based system. It is not reasonable for the Government to make public spending cuts through a digital-by-default process and pass all the burden back to the farmers for delivering the Government’s own administration system. The farmers experience that as oppressive and nerve wracking; it raises anxiety levels to a completely unreasonable pitch, given the significance of what the Government have to do.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

I hope that the hon. Lady is not painting a picture of the old system through rose-tinted spectacles. As I am sure she will recall, when the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) was in charge of DEFRA there was a paper-based system whereby farmers were not paid for years, never mind weeks. At least under the current regime the majority of farmers are paid on 1 December, allowing their cash flow and business to flourish.

[Helen Goodman]

We will see whether the hon. Gentleman’s picture of the current system turns out to be right—I do not think it is accurate. I do not think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South was particularly happy with the criticisms I made of the system in the previous Parliament—they were also significant—but the fact is that this Minister is in the DEFRA hot seat now and it is his responsibility to run a system which is usable and farmer friendly. That patently is not happening at the moment. I am extremely concerned to hear the Chair of the Select Committee say that the head of the Rural Payments Agency is considering not having a paper-based system when we know that the rural broadband roll-out programme will take another three or possibly four years. It is absolutely plain that we need a paper-based system for another five years, and I hope that the Minister will be able to stand at the Dispatch Box, allay all the fears of our farmers and tell us that that is what he will ensure happens.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Wireless broadband will reach parts of my constituency in the Blackdown hills that fibre optics will not, but wireless broadband will not necessarily get there in time to ensure that applications for the single farm payment can be made online. That is why we must take care to get the payment right in the first year.

Ensuring that it is the working farmer who receives the payment is a good idea, and I am interested in what the Minister has to say about that, but we do not want to create the biggest bureaucratic nightmare to prove whether someone is or is not the farmer. If we are not careful, we will make the system increasingly complicated.

I spent rather a long time—some might say too long—dealing with the CAP in another place, and I think that one of the overall problems is that across 28 countries, from Finland to Greece, from Poland to Germany and right through to Great Britain and Ireland, there are so many crops that can be grown, so many soil types, so many temperatures and so many amounts of rainfall, with some areas getting very little and others being flooded, that if we try to come forward with a common policy, we will end up with the biggest mess known to man and woman. There is no doubt about it. We cannot have a common policy unless there is much greater flexibility.

Are we to have a policy that demands three rotational crops, because Germany grows solidly maize, maize and maize? This country has very diverse farming and lands, with uplands and grasslands, but many countries have hardly any grassland. Somebody driving from Calais to Berlin will see hardly a single hedge the whole way there, because they have all been ripped up over the years as a result of a different policy on the way they farm. We have great hedges, and it is good that they have become ecological focus areas. In my view, the hedges are probably the most important part of a field, because they are home to wildlife and birds. That, above all, is what we need to concentrate on.

[Mr Spencer]

I wonder whether one of the unexpected outcomes of trying to apply that policy across the whole of Europe is that we will end up supporting the least efficient farmers and those that are economically challenged, perhaps because they farm in arid areas or small alpine villages, whereas we should actually be supporting the most efficient farmers, many of whom are in France or the UK.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend is right to a degree, but is it right that the most productive land across the whole of Europe, including in East Anglia, should get the highest payments, given that farmers there can make the most from that land? We must have some balance in the process. We have talked about the uplands tonight, and there is no doubt that upland livestock farmers struggle. In my view, it could be argued—my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire will probably jump out of his seat—that some of those farmers in East Anglia, Cambridgeshire and elsewhere across the country who can grow very good arable crops, perhaps 10 tonnes of wheat per hectare, could see just a little bit of those payments move uphill. That is what we are trying to do, but I think that we probably need to do a little more. There is an argument there, but I think that we need to ensure that we support farming in those marginal areas, which is more difficult.

We must also ensure that in the end we deliver a policy that encourages food production. It is great to support the environment, but we must remember that in the uplands and on a lot of the permanent pasture on the hills it is the cattle and sheep that will keep farming as it is. It was not put there by God; it was put there by farmers. We must remember that it is the farmers who look after the countryside. We must remember that in order to support them, we must ensure that they have an income. We have to spread that as far and wide as we can.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Spencer]

Retire!

[Bob Stewart]

Certainly. Will my hon. Friend enlighten me as to whether we have any control over how we allocate the CAP in England, or is that decided in Brussels?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

I start by drawing Members’ attention to my declaration of interest in the register.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) said, the countryside we see today is the result of many generations of farmers who have managed it and created the landscape that we hold so dear. For many generations, they did that without any support from politicians or Governments because they cared for the countryside and wanted to farm for many generations to come.

The common agricultural policy is probably the single most successful policy ever dreamt up by a politician in that it was designed to keep Europe well fed. For three generations, our nation has enjoyed supermarkets and shops full of food, and people have become used to having food on the shelves when they demand it. During the war, my grandmother would go to the shops to buy lamb chops and be told, “You can’t have lamb chops—you’ll have beef dripping”, and she would have accepted that. We have now had two or three generations of consumers who have no concept of what food insecurity is like. We should be very grateful not only to the common agricultural policy but to our farmers for giving us this period of being well fed.

Many changes are coming in the common agricultural policy shakedown, and not all of them should be welcomed. There are large implications for how the UK’s food will be produced in future. We should bear in mind that food production and our being well fed as a nation is the fundamental point of this policy. Putting that at risk would be a great disaster.

[Jesse Norman]

The National Farmers Union has said:

“A modulation rate of 9%”

on pillar two

“would have been able to fund all current DEFRA rural development programmes, renew all agreements expiring within the funding period and have a further £1 billion to spend on new commitments.”

Does my hon. Friend agree that makes it harder for UK farmers to compete, and has this not worked out as well as well as he would have liked?

[Mr Spencer]

As I was saying, a number of challenges are coming up. UK farmers are particularly skilled at competing. For at least two generations, they have competed on an uneven playing field and managed to continue their business in doing so. I accept my hon. Friend’s point. It is also worth bearing in mind that the taxpayer is putting an enormous amount of cash into the system and so has to get not only food security but a benefit to the environment that they are not getting at the moment.

It is very easy to stand up in this Chamber, be critical of Ministers and say that they could have done this or that. What we do not hear about, however, is the stuff that the Secretary of State and the Minister block—the ideas from Europe that did not make it into the final agreement. If the Minister has time during his summing up, it would be interesting if he could indicate some of the things he was able to stop happening that would have had us jumping up and down in the Chamber if they had made it through and some of our near neighbours on the continent had got their way.

Many Members have referred to the need for broadband in order to deliver the documentation required to make an application. There are farmers in Nottinghamshire who are based within 5 miles of the city centre of Nottingham whose current internet speed is 3 megabits. It is almost quicker to drive to Nottingham to collect a form than it is to try to dial-up on the internet to download it. They are very close to a major urban population, but BT has no plans to take them out of that not spot. Nottinghamshire county council has a programme to roll out broadband across Nottinghamshire, but unfortunately those farmers are not part of that programme. We have to find a way to help them.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

The other day, I took an entrepreneur to see another Minister about setting up a private system of wireless connection. In north Dorset over a period of weeks, he has got hold of some very big names to establish a system of up to between 30 and 50 megabits. The point he made was that BT needs to be far more transparent with the public and tell all of us what exactly it will be able to achieve and, if it cannot do that by a certain time, entrepreneurs should be given far more encouragement by our Government to get in there and sort out this problem.

[Mr Spencer]

I recognise that new technologies may be able to assist, but there will always be not spots—those little black holes—where people are left out of the system. We need to find a way to help those farmers.

I think that the three-crop rule is one of those well-intended European Union rules that will have unintended consequences. My right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) has referred to the fact that many areas are block-farmed. Large contracting companies that help their neighbours with farm contracts and that block-crop from farm to farm will no longer be able to do that, which will lead to a number of extra road miles, inefficiency and environmental damage as a result of the amount of fuel burned and road traffic. That is not a desirable consequence and it will not benefit the environment at all.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I draw attention to my declarations in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Does my hon. Friend agree that a solution to this problem would be that every single piece of land eligible to claim should grow three crops in three years, which would eliminate the problems of the mono-cropping of maize in Germany and, as I saw last week, between Paris and Strasbourg?

[Mr Spencer]

If I could extend my hon. Friend’s proposal to three crops in five years, that would allow for a normal cropping rotation of two weeks for oil seed or pulse, followed perhaps by a spring crop. We do not recognise some of the challenges that face UK agriculture today as we take more and more agricultural chemicals out of our toolbox. The rise of resistant black grass, certainly in the midlands and East Anglia, is a real challenge and we are going to have to allow spring cropping to deal with it.

On the 5% greening, I am glad that the Government are allowing hedgerows to be used. We must, of course, move as quickly as we can to incorporate stone walls and other environmentally beneficial margins at the same time. If the mapping has to be digital, I remind Members of the challenges the previous Administration faced while trying to move to a mapping system. If I may use a Sherwood expression, the Minister must make sure his ducks are in a row and that, when we get to that system, farmers can get their payment as soon as possible. If there are delays, and if the system is complicated and farmers have to wait for their single farm payment, will the Minister engage with the banking sector to make sure that the banks support farmers through that break in cash-flow and that there is other such support?

In summary, three things matter to this nation: that we are well fed; that the environment is maintained and protected; and that, in order to deliver those things, we have profitable farmers. At the end of this monumental process of CAP reform, I hope that we can deliver all three of them.

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[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I am delighted to take part in this very important debate.

I thank the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) for providing a comprehensive analysis of her Committee’s report in relation to CAP. She took it a stage further with some detailed technical points to which I am sure the Minister will respond. She also raised issues relating to broadband access to the new IT system, which will in many ways be universally rolled out overnight. There are great concerns about that. The issue was picked up by other hon. Members, including former Ministers, was digital by default.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) also raised that issue and asked how people would be able to access the new IT system when it is the only game in town. She spoke with passion about the financial and IT challenges facing her hill farmers, pointing out that 40% of them have no access to rural broadband. She called for something that I think we can all agree on: a useable and farmer-friendly system of payments.

The right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), with his expertise in the Department, bemoaned, rightly, the lack of progress on real reform. He supported the idea of moving payments uphill—I think that that has universal support across the Chamber, with many hon. Members speaking to that point—and described the three-crop rule, another matter raised by many hon. Members, as pointless and bureaucratic. It has received universal condemnation not only from farmers but from environmentalists too.

The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) spoke up for direct payments to support hard-pressed farmers. I think that at one point he was talking against modulation of pillar two, but he then flipped it around and said that there could, and perhaps should, be common cause between environmental groups and farming organisations to argue for greater pillar two payments to support very hard-pressed farmers. That was an interesting twist at the end.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), in a very good contribution, said in response to an intervention that we are limited in how much we can decide. I will come on to that in a moment, but I think that even with this mish-mash, as it was described by the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire, there is scope for some decisions within England and in the other nations and regions.

The hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) praised the CAP, praised farmers and praised Ministers—it was a very praiseworthy speech. He spoke well for his constituents and farmers.

The hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) opened his remarks by calling for a balance to be struck between the environment and farming and food security. That relates to the gist of what I want to talk about in a moment. It is fair to say that although there has been praise in various areas, there has also been a feeling of weary resignation among many of the contributions tonight. I think the phrase he used was “the best of a bad job”. I say to Members on all sides that in the next stage of reform we really have to do better, go further, take a lead and do a much better job.

This round of CAP reform has been criticised by all sides. Peter Kendall, the president of the National Farmers Union until February this year, complained last year that the Secretary of State had disadvantaged farmers with his stance on CAP negotiations. He complained that the Secretary of State had come back with

“less than he started with”

for British farmers. The NFU described the round last year as “disappointing” and as a “missed opportunity”.

The newly-elected NFU president, Meurig Raymond said more recently that we now have

“a CAP package which has huge practical hurdles for all concerned in agriculture. It’s not the promised simplification; policy measures distort farmers’ commercial decisions and do little to help us gear-up to the long-term food production and environmental challenges which we know are ahead.”

The criticisms from farming unions come from one perspective. Environmental organisations come from another viewpoint, but they have also derided CAP reform. In particular, they have derided the greening measures as so much “greenwash”. The greening proposals linked to direct payments are described as

“so vague as to be useless”

in a study by the authoritative journal Science, which estimates that as many as nine out of 10 farms would be exempt from key greening measures.

[Mr Spencer]

As the hon. Gentleman commented, I am an optimist and I was optimistic in my speech, but surely he must recognise the challenges of linking agricultural systems such as those in Greece, where it is so arid it is only possible to grow olives, and the large plains of East Anglia?

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Yes, indeed. That is why it is essential that the framework works in respect of what CAP reform has always set out to do—to break the link between pure production subsidy and the targeting of the subsidy at public goods, increased innovation and productivity, and not just production. It cannot be a one-size-fits-all model. The framework has to be there at an EU level, but the implementation at the level of the nation state is critical. We should not be afraid to take the lead on that and to try to get our balance right as between the environment, farming and food security.

The conservation director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Martin Harper, observed that the proposals

“failed to maximise the amount of money that it could have invested in wildlife-friendly farming and now it has made the greening measure meaningless.”

So we have “meaningless” and “useless” from the perspective of environmental organisations; and “deeply disappointed” and “a missed opportunity” from the perspective of farming unions. A change is needed in Europe and in the UK on how CAP is done. We need to show real leadership and real direction on both farm productivity and sustainability—it is not happening.

The key question is whether the more than £15 billion annual subsidy payment to farming in the UK—and £11.5 billion in England specifically—provides the best value for taxpayers’ money. A study last year suggested that sensitively adjusting the focus of the subsidy in the UK to enhance environmental and public goods, including things like flood alleviation, rather than purely units of production, could produce annual additional benefits of over £18 billion in the UK. The study did not take into account the additional benefits of cleaner air and cleaner water, which would further improve the net gains.

The Secretary of State—one would think he would find favour with that sort of approach—said last year:

“I do believe there is a real role for taxpayer’s money in compensating farmers for the work they do in enhancing the environment and providing public goods for which there is no market mechanism.”

He also said specifically last year:

“I believe that transferring the maximum 15% from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2 would be the right thing to do where we can demonstrate it would deliver worthwhile and valuable outcomes for farming and society and contribute to rural economic growth and enhance the environment”.

He was quite specific on that. When the Secretary of State said that repeatedly, wildlife and environmental groups had every right to be optimistic at least on pillar two funding, even with their disappointment on the greening elements of direct payments. As the RSPB said in its response to the consultation earlier this year:

“We…welcome the Secretary of State’s assertion that Pillar II ‘unquestionably represents the better use of taxpayers money’”,

and it went on to urge the Government to

“follow through on their intention to maximise the benefits that Rural Development can deliver.”

The Secretary of State, then, was unequivocal, unyielding and unbowed all the way through—until he crumbled, U-turned and settled on 12%. I have to ask why he was outflanked and outgunned by other forces; what happened to his unequivocal stance?

The Government have signalled that they will review the situation in 2017, but I have to say that this looks like a smokescreen to cover the Secretary of State’s embarrassment at being forced to retreat from the repeatedly stated 15% modulation that he had repeatedly promised. That is not the only sign of weakness either, as the decisions on degression and capping of CAP are also spectacularly lacking in ambition and vision.

Flooding (Somerset)

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

As my hon. Friend will have noted, we have an ambitious programme of flood defence schemes that goes right through to 2021. Significantly, that has not been matched by Her Majesty’s official Opposition. If her council puts in a partnership bid, I am sure that it will slot into our programme in the coming years, although I cannot promise when.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

Once the waters have subsided and the Secretary of State starts to put right the wrongs of the past, will he have an urgent review of the use of sandbags, which are an old technology and are actually quite porous, when new technologies are available? My constituent, Simon Crowther, has flood protection solutions that deliver better results than sandbags.

[Mr Paterson]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. There may well be better alternatives to sandbags. I would be very interested to hear from him if his constituent’s solution is as easy to move around as empty sandbags, because that has proved to be invaluable in recent weeks.

Flooding

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State assure the House that he will do everything he can to make sure that local authorities, highway authorities, the Environment Agency and providers of sewerage and water services co-operate and collaborate, rather than pass the buck from one to the other?

[Mr Paterson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have seen variability with the resilience forums. At the one I went to in Kent, it was quite clear from listening in on conversations that some agencies were really sharp, on the ball and participating, but that others were not quite as reactive. That is one area that we need to look at in the review, first, as I said earlier, to check whether information is getting through to some of these entities and, secondly, whether the entities are actually taking action. That is the area on which we need to concentrate.

Water Bill

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty]

I know that you are a fan of all things Yorkshire, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I will come on to Yorkshire Water in a moment, if the former Minister will bear with me.

As the hon. Lady said, among those who do not pay there are those who can pay. That is unfair on decent customers who meet their obligations and we believe the time has come for more robust action to be taken. Some 80% of those who do not pay are in rented accommodation. One of the challenges facing water companies is tracking down those who refuse to pay because they move homes far more often than the average person. The only way to track them down effectively is to require landlords to provide water companies with a list of tenants. Individuals moving property would not then disappear from the system and evade paying their debts.

The measure would be a simple step and it would not require a disproportionate amount of new bureaucracy to implement. It is estimated that approximately half of total bad debt falls into the category of “can pay, won’t pay”. The Select Committee, of which the Minister was previously a member, has unanimously backed the measure throughout this Parliament, so why the opposition from the Government?

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

I understand, and sympathise with, the point the hon. Gentleman is making, but there is no legal way to force a tenant to inform their former landlord of a forwarding address. How can a landlord know what information to supply to the water companies, so they are able to track former tenants?

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who I think is a recent addition to the Select Committee. I do not think he was a member of the Committee when we had this discussion, so for his benefit I will say that it is quite simple. As the water companies have said, they would be supplied with names and addresses. The onus would then be on them to carry out the necessary activity to match up the appropriate individual, and there would be no significant burden on the landlord, the local authority or social housing provider. The burden for that work would fall on the water company. He will recall from our time in Committee that I was not always the water industry’s biggest fan, but on this the Select Committee, the water industry and the Opposition are united, so again I come back to this question of why the Government are so opposed to the proposal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thomas Docherty]

I congratulate the Minister on stating the blindingly obvious. Of course, the landlord would have to provide that information, but it is not the longest list in the world, and it is information that landlords have anyway, so the Opposition, like the Select Committee, find it difficult to comprehend why it would be so onerous for landlords to provide a list of their tenants by property. If he has specific examples of hard-pressed landlords who have made representations to him, I am sure he will refer to them when he responds.

For the fourth time, I ask myself the question: why the opposition from the Government? The Secretary of State has had his usual Pavlovian reaction to a suggestion that the Government should take action. It appears once again that when Parliament, the Select Committee and the water industry ask DEFRA to do something, its knee-jerk response is to think of spurious reasons why it should not or cannot do it. Our new clause would be a pragmatic and efficient measure that would help to drive down costs on all decent households, help water companies to do their job and ensure that all customers meet their responsibilities.

Our second new clause—new clause 10—recognises that not all water companies have done all they can to tackle the problem of bad debt. As I mentioned earlier, although the average bad debt figure is about £15, there are wide variations across the country. As the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) pointed out, that is because some, such as Yorkshire Water, have worked with customers and debt advice groups, such as Citizens Advice, to put in place measures to help customers genuinely struggling to access payment packages and programmes, but unfortunately that is not the case across the country. Too many water companies have come to the unsurprising conclusion that, because they can pass the cost of bad debt on to their other customers, they need not bother to do anything about it themselves.

That is why we have tabled new clause 10. We want to give Ofwat and water companies a clear and unambiguous signal that hard-pressed customers should no longer be treated as a cash cow by companies that cannot be bothered to meet their own responsibilities. Where the regulator and the Department are satisfied that water companies are not doing enough to pursue bad debtors, the cost should no longer be passed on to other customers. Taken together, not only would our two new clauses be practical measures, but they would send a clear signal that while we will do more to help those who are struggling, we expect all customers and water companies to do their fair share.

Our third new clause—new clause 8—would help to ensure that customers know about the help for which they are eligible. In 1999, the last Labour Government introduced WaterSure to help low-income metered households with high essential water use. WaterSure caps the bills of metered households in receipt of a qualifying benefit or tax credit at the average bill for that water company’s operating area. It applies to households with three or more children under the age of 19 living at home or where someone in the household has a medical condition that necessitates high water use. It is an important measure that at the time received cross-party support and which, according to the latest figures that the Minister gave us in Committee, has helped 70,500 households in England—I think a similar scheme has helped approximately 20,000 households in Wales. Although that is welcome, we believe that that level is unacceptable. Given that, as the Consumer Council for Water has said, only one third of eligible households are in receipt of the benefit to which they are entitled, the Government have been guilty of complacency.

The Minister previously claimed there was no need for the new clause because all the water companies already provided this information. For the benefit of Members who have not had a chance to look at the amendment paper, we are proposing that information about the eligibility criteria and how to apply should be included in all water bills. He believes that all water companies already provide this information, but unfortunately for him the reality does not match his statement. Not only do his own figures show that the current approach is not working, but our own anecdotal research shows that customers are not even aware that WaterSure exists. We want to make it clear to water companies that they must do much more to promote the scheme, and we want Ofwat and the Government to hold them to account if they do not. I hope he has reflected not only on the evidence we presented in Committee, but on his own figures and the evidence from the CCW, and will listen to common sense.

Finally, our fourth new clause—new clause 7—deals with the central problem of the failure of the voluntary approach to social tariffs. As we have set out, too few water companies are helping too few customers through social tariffs, and it is clear that left to their own devices many water companies, by their own admission, will never introduce such schemes. That is why we are proposing a national affordability scheme to end the postcode lottery and ensure national standards for eligibility. We would expect schemes to be funded by the excess profits of the water companies, not by other water bill payers. As I have said, last year these companies made an eye-watering £1.9 billion in pre-tax profits and paid out £1.8 billion to investors. The idea, for example, that Yorkshire Water, which paid out £240 million, cannot afford to provide support through social tariffs is clearly nonsense.

Enough is enough. Hard-pressed households need real help now, and these new clauses are four practical and simple measures that would ensure they get it. It is time for the coalition to match our commitments.

[Mr Spencer]

I want to make some brief comments that were too long for an intervention, particularly about new clause 3, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh). I sincerely hope that, in summing up, the Minister will reflect on today’s debate, which has shown recognition across the House that consumers and our constituents are finding it very difficult to pay their household bills because of pressure on the household budget. It is worth saying that the Government recognise that challenge and are doing their best to assist, not least by turning around the failing economy that they inherited. Needless to say, a section of society will find it very challenging to pay their utility bills, and the Government have an obligation to try to assist and support them.

There is another group of people who are unwilling to pay, as a result of a frankly malicious intent to avoid paying the bill that is due to be paid. It is vital that the water companies have the power to decide which cases fit into which categories. Those who are clearly unable to pay should be able to receive assistance, support and sympathy from the water companies. New clause 3 goes some way towards assisting the water companies to identify people within the benefit and welfare support system, who may be in need of extra assistance.

I am somewhat sympathetic to new clause 8, too, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) and is designed to ensure that water companies put the neediest customers on “the lowest possible tariff”. Those who find themselves under pressure in the most challenging of circumstances are often those least able to identify from their bills which is the correct tariff for them to be on and least able to challenge the water companies to put them on a better tariff, allowing them to afford to pay their household bills. I hope that the Minister will give further consideration to that, if he is minded to do so.

Finally, I support those who have said it is difficult to understand why the Department for Work and Pensions or the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are unable or unwilling to supply the necessary data to the water companies. I hope that when the Minister sums up, he will be able to shed some light on those thoughts.

[Mr Redwood]

I hope that the Government will look at the issue of unpaid bills. Colleagues of all parties are right to draw attention to the problem—one of the many sources of excess cost in the water industry, which it would be good to reduce or eliminate. It is undoubtedly the case that we pay dearly for our main utility provision in this country, and I fear that the main reason why water bills are high and will stay high is that there is no competition. It is a great pity that this Bill will not introduce proper competition into water as into other areas, as it would make a lot of difference. The amendments are designed to deal with the situation of having regional monopolies that are in many cases unresponsive and have high cost structures. Then there is the particular problem of customers deciding—quite wilfully, when some of them are perfectly capable of paying—not to pay their bills. Clearly, more needs to be done on that.

There is some good in all the amendments before us this evening, but I am not persuaded that they take the trick. It might be helpful to know who the tenant was, but if the tenant cannot be traced to where they have gone, it will be impossible to get them to pay. It might be useful to know something more about the benefits and financial circumstances of individuals, although there are issues of privacy and the handling of data that could cause difficulties, but that then fails to enable us to come down hard enough on the people who can afford to pay, which is the real issue.

--- Later in debate ---

I wish briefly to refer to aspects of the Flood Re scheme and the amendments that relate to it. The adaptation sub-committee, which advises the Committee on Climate Change, has, through its chairman, Lord Krebs, made various points about the importance of getting the scheme absolutely right at this stage rather than later on. In a letter that he wrote to the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about the awareness of flood risk and the importance of taking account of rising flood risk levels, he said that there are at least five issues that the Government need to address but have not yet done so. Given that, as we heard earlier in the Secretary of State’s statement on flooding, we know that we are now going to get events of this kind far more regularly, it is incumbent on Parliament to make sure that the insurance scheme that is being introduced is absolutely fit for purpose.

[Mr Spencer]

I rise to speak to amendments 1, 2, 3 and 10, particularly amendment 1, which stands in my name.

There is enormous frustration in Nottinghamshire about the fact that when a new development takes place there is an obligation to connect and that often means that the public sewer, which is already under pressure, becomes flooded. Many Members will recognise that villages in our constituencies have grown over a number of decades. Often in Nottinghamshire, those villages have a working sewerage system but no one has developed a surface water system. That means that when somebody builds a new conservatory at the back of their house the local authority allows them to put the downpipe into the public sewer, and that puts pressure on an already pressurised sewerage system.

The problem is exacerbated when a new road is built. There is a good example of that in Nottinghamshire, where the Hucknall inner relief road, which has been permitted by Nottinghamshire county council, is about to go right through the town of Hucknall, and the plan includes dumping the surface water from that new road into an already flooding public sewerage system. That is unacceptable. To put it into Sherwood language, while we have got diggers on the ground digging up the whole town to put a new road in, it is not beyond the wit of man to put an enormous pipe underneath the road to take the surface water and not put it into the public sewer and flood the homes of people who are already suffering from sewage flowing through them.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

We have exactly the same problem in my constituency of Stroud in connection with Slimbridge and a relatively old sewerage system. The real question is how we manage to calibrate the capacity and quality of the systems, certainly some of the older ones, within the context of this Bill.

[Mr Spencer]

It is very difficult, but we can make sure that anything new that is built does not make the problem worse. We have an obligation to try to improve things as developments take place. What causes enormous frustration is that the bodies responsible, whether it is the sewerage company or the highway authority, pass the buck so that, in effect, the person who causes the problem does not take responsibility for solving it but it falls on someone else.

Another example is a small village in Sherwood called Farnsfield, where there is already flooding. A developer is applying to put a large number of houses and new roads at the edge of the village, and there is no surface water system. The poor people in the old village who are suffering with sewage flooding their homes are going to have that problem made much worse if the new development takes place and the surface water is put into an already overflowing sewerage system. I appeal to the Minister to see whether he can find a way to encourage, if not force, local authorities to take responsibility when they allow planning permission for a new highway or road and make sure that the highway authority that is developing the road, or the developer that is developing a new estate, picks up the cost of solving the problem that they are creating and disposes of the surface water responsibly rather than putting pressure on an existing, overflowing sewerage system.

[Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

I want to speak to new clause 13, which I have tabled. It is headed, “Unlawful communications”. Several hon. Members have asked me about that, and I apologise because it is a little confusing. It does not deal with unlawful communications but unlawful connections, or, more colloquially, misconnections. The new clause would amend section 109 of the Water Industry Act 1991, and that is why it uses the word “communications”, which is used in that Act. It is exactly the same as an amendment that was included in the draft Flood and Water Management Bill of 2009 but sadly had to be dropped from the final Bill because of a lack of legislative time as we approached the 2010 general election. The reason for tabling the new clause is to find out why the provision has not been included in this Bill.

Misconnections occur when separate surface water and foul water sewers are wrongly connected by households or businesses. The reasons for this range from the over-enthusiasm of household DIYers to cowboy builders and plumbers connecting to the first and most convenient sewer, which is often the wrong one. The consequence is pollution of groundwater, watercourses, streams, rivers, and, in my case, a local lake. The problem comes to light only as a result of the visible pollution that we can see, which is sometimes accompanied by some rather unpleasant smells, as has affected local communities in my constituency.

The cost of tracking this down once it has been discovered is very difficult to quantify, because it is extremely difficult to find out where the misconnections have taken place. It is also very time-consuming. As a result, it is a significant problem, particularly in more densely populated areas. A large number of misconnections are occurring in parts of my constituency.

Thames Water estimates that one in 10 homes in its area are misconnected. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimates that 300,000 homes in England and Wales were misconnected in 2009 and, ominously, that the number will increase to 500,000 by 2015.

Part of the solution, of course, is better information about and greater awareness of the problem of misconnection. Some steps have been taken to try to address that. Thames Water has set up an industry strategy group, as have other water companies. My local authority has sent leaflets to areas particularly badly affected. Of course, we can do better, but the reality in my constituency and up and down the country—this is verified by DEFRA figures—is that, as current misconnections are dealt with, others are adding to the problem and it is getting worse, not better. I could cite instances in my constituency and I am sure that other Members have similar examples.

Part of the reason for the problem is that, although water companies can disconnect from the connected drains, they cannot redirect them into correct sewers; only local authorities have the power to do that. If, for any reason, the householder or business does not carry out the works, the local authority has powers to do so and to bill that individual or organisation for the costs. New clause 13 seeks to grant water companies the same enforcement powers as those available to local authorities. They could then deal directly—they already deal with other aspects of the problem—with misconnections.

Beef Cattle and Sheep (Carbon Footprint)

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish]

The hon. Lady is right, because climatic conditions will make a difference. The amount of time that an animal takes to finish grazing to become fat also makes a difference, as does the time taken to finish an animal for meat production. All such things have to be taken into consideration. Of course there are a number of ways to measure carbon.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

In my hon. Friend’s calculations, will he make reference to the transportation of meat once it has been processed through an abattoir? For example, moving beef from South America to Europe using aviation fuel enormously increases the carbon footprint.

[Neil Parish]

Indeed. When we import meat from South America, Australia or New Zealand, we should take into account the length of time that it takes to get here, especially if it comes by air. Of course, if it comes by sea, it is argued that the carbon footprint is not as large, but it is there none the less. That is why local home-produced food that travels very little distance to the abattoir and that is grazed nicely on good permanent pasture must be of great benefit to all the United Kingdom.

[Neil Parish]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. The purpose of this inquiry and report is to look at the benefits of producing grass-fed beef and lamb, to keep sustainable grass pasture and to produce very good meat. We would not necessarily want or be able to plough such land, and a huge amount of carbon is captured within the soil. We took some evidence that showed that over years of permanent pasture the carbon actually increases, so there are many good reasons for producing this high-quality beef and lamb.

I will, if I may, continue with my contribution. The footprint of sheep, according to the PAS 2050, is 11.86 kg CO₂ equivalent per kilogramme of live weight. The comparative figures for Wales were 7.51 kg CO₂ equivalent per kilogramme of live weight and 8.6 kg CO₂ equivalent per kilogramme of live weight.

As that has demonstrated, even within a country, there is significant variation in the statistics and no way to determine whether they were driven by different efficiencies or by different ways of producing data. That makes any form of comparative assessment of carbon footprint challenging and poses major difficulties for policy formulation. There is no international consensus on sequestration—the process by which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere by pasture land through a process of absorption and deposition in the soil, which acts as a carbon sink. In essence, that is a natural form of carbon capture and storage.

The importance of including carbon sequestration is highlighted by Mr Bill Grayson, a producer who gave evidence to the inquiry. He ran four models on his farm’s emissions. The PAS 2050 model, which does not include sequestration, concluded that his farm was a net emitter. The other three methods, which include sequestration, put his farm as a net absorber of carbon. Evidently such significant differences make sensible policy development almost impossible.

[Mr Spencer]

My hon. Friend is being very generous with his time. I hope that he recognises that we need to view this matter globally. It makes no sense to allow UK farmers to plant trees and remove land from beef production to then allow South American farmers to tear up rain forests to produce beef and to ship it around the world, so that it sits on supermarket shelves next to UK-produced beef.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend raises another important issue. I have visited Brazil, where people are ploughing up a lot of the savannah and planting soya bean and sugar beet and driving cattle towards the rain forests and allowing them to partly destroy the rain forests before people cut down the trees. So it is absolutely essential that we produce in this country high-quality beef and lamb, so that we do not need as many imports; that is absolutely clear. I will go on to talk a little more about those examples shortly.

I want to highlight the methodology used to produce the figures. Achieving consistency in the figures used should be viewed as one of the top priorities for the industry and the Government, who should work in partnership. We urge Ministers and officials at DEFRA to accelerate work at both the EU level and with international bodies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation, to seek global consensus in an agreed methodology.

For example, if we compare the impact of livestock in the UK and in France using nationally-produced data, our producers will be hugely disadvantaged because French data will include sequestration. It is not very often that I ask a Minister to look at a French system, but on this occasion I will. We urge him to look into this issue as a priority and—if we are to see greater co-operation between nations in our effort to respond to environmental and food challenges—to migrate to the model accepted in France. If the Government do not view this as a viable course of action, they need to make a robust case to say why not. The disparity built into the status quo is no longer acceptable in a global debate, because we debate carbon across the whole world and we need to measure it in a similar way.

The report also highlighted other weaknesses in the current life-cycle analysis in the model that DEFRA uses, in addition to its exclusion of sequestration. It is well documented and understood that grazing livestock plays a major role in the management of our landscape; I think that all hon. Members from all parties in the House would recognise that. That view is supported by the English National Park Authorities Association and Natural England, which rightly point out that the landscape value generated by upland farming has an economic benefit to the area, owing to the tourism and business revenue extracted, and that grassland management is important to maximise upland areas’ efficiency as a carbon sink.

Badger Cull

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I spent the weekend talking to farmers to find out their position on the issue and I was shocked by the stress, the trauma and the cost that this illness is causing. I am hugely supportive of farmers and I want us to do everything we can to fight and destroy the disease.

I want to say a few words about the implications of testing for farmers. They have to pay for a vet to come, normally on a yearly basis. They have to bring all their stock in to be tested. If there is a reactor, within a couple of days when the vet comes back that animal will be slaughtered. That locks down all movement on that farm for 60 days. Yes, farmers get compensation for slaughtered animals, but not for the lock-down. If they were taking animals to be covered or if they were taking animals to market, all that would stop. Some 28,000 cattle are slaughtered, costing the taxpayer £100 million in compensation and costs. From last January to this January the number of reactors has gone up by 24.2%. Bovine TB is a dreadful disease and we need to stamp it out. However, I am against the cull.

I am against the cull for all the reasons set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) so I will not rehash the same argument. I want to make three quick points. First, badgers are a protected species under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992. That is an important and powerful fact to remember. Secondly, for the cull to be effective, 70% of all badgers need to be culled. We do not know how many badgers there are. DEFRA estimated the population in the pilot area to be 1,300 in every 300 km area, but the randomised badger culling trials estimated the figure to be 3,000, so will the licence to kill be to shoot 910 or 2,100 badgers? The difference will be dramatic. I do not understand how a 70% target can be set without knowing what the total figure is.

Thirdly, and most important to me, are the logistics of a cull. If there is a badger sett in my back garden, does that mean that people can come and shoot the badgers in it? I do not understand the logic of that. If a farmer does not want a cull on his land, does he have the right to stop the cull, or will the animals be culled if he is in a TB hot spot? As was mentioned earlier, the public will be incredibly anxious if they see people at night in balaclavas going round with shotguns. The thought of that freaks me out.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is summarising what is driving the enormous frustration in the countryside with some of the ignorant comments that she is making. No one is allowed to shoot a badger with a shotgun. It must be done by a trained person with a rifle. Badger setts very rarely appear in people’s gardens. Badgers like to live away from people. Some of these comments are so ignorant that they cause enormous frustration.

[Sarah Champion]

I find the hon. Gentleman’s use of language offensive and patronising. I do not like to be called ignorant. He has no basis for saying that.

Another thing that concerns me is that there is a budget of £500,000 for policing. Police often spend £500,000 to secure the safety of just one march, so that seems a tiny amount for the three culling areas. I believe the figure will be much higher. The Secretary of State mentioned that culls had been effective in other countries, but it is a lot easier to shoot a water buffalo with whatever gun it is than to shoot a badger. Badgers are by nature private, they are nocturnal and it is hard even to see them, let alone shoot them. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) asked whether a clean shot could be guaranteed. I do not believe that it is possible in all cases. There is a risk, as was mentioned, of badgers going back into their sett and dying.

All these issues could be resolved, but even if they were and a cull went ahead, the estimate is that the reduction would be only 16% after nine years. That is a tiny amount, if all the objections could be overcome. Surely a better long-term solution is to put all our money and resources into a bovine vaccine. The Government cut the funding for research into and development of such a vaccine and the funding needs to be restored. The British Veterinary Association says that £1 billion will be wasted on TB over the next decade. Surely if a small percentage of that could be invested in research and getting the vaccine closer—[Interruption.] If so, that is brilliant, but let us chuck more money at research because in the long term it will save us.

The main argument against the vaccine is that the EU forbids it because it is not yet possible to distinguish between vaccinated and infected animals and the EU would ban all live exports. All the farmers I spoke to said that they were against live exports, so I do not think there is much strength in the argument. In the short term, I believe we should use a combination of vaccinating badgers, good husbandry and the existing controls, but we need to drive forward a bovine vaccine.

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[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

Let me first draw the House’s attention to my declaration of interest, not only as a former dairy farmer and a licensed holder of an exempt finishing unit, but as a landowner with badger setts on his farm—badger setts of which I am particularly proud. We in Nottinghamshire have the healthiest, smartest badgers that anyone could wish for, and I want to keep them that way. They are something of which I am very proud, a heritage of our country which should be protected and looked after. I want my badgers to remain healthy and TB-free for as long as possible.

As we heard from the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), this debate has prompted a fair amount of emotion. I have to say, as a former dairy farmer, that it is impossible to describe what it is like to be present at the birth of a calf, to be there when it takes its first breath, to be there when it drinks its first milk, and then to take it all the way through its life; to choose the animal with which it will breed, and to trace its family tree back through your father’s to your grandfather’s generation. It is impossible to quantify the importance of that experience, emotionally, to farmers, or to quantify the extent of their attachment to their animals.

To be told by Opposition Members that when our cattle are killed—when they are slaughtered—it is our fault, because we did not look after the biosecurity of our farms, is something very powerful which causes an enormous amount of emotion. I believe that farmers have the highest biosecurity that they could possibly have on their units, and it is physically impossible to keep a grass field where cattle are grazing badger-free. It is important for us to deal with the facts of the case rather than with alleged misdemeanours. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) talked of balaclava-clad gunmen with shotguns riding around the countryside, which is a complete fabrication. Some of what is said is quite shameful.

We must use every tool in the box to protect my badgers, to protect my cattle, and to protect people from a disease that is spreading across the countryside towards Nottinghamshire. We will use biosecurity measures, movement restrictions and vaccination when it is available, but we have to take out the infected badgers in other parts of the country, which will otherwise spread this terrible disease across the east midlands towards Nottinghamshire and destroy these cattle.

I urge Members to support the Government in this unfortunate but necessary act. I urge Members to support the cull and eradicate TB from this country.

Agricultural Wages Board

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I will be talking in detail about the seasonal agricultural workers scheme. I just say to the right hon. Gentleman that 1,610 people in his constituency will be affected by the reduction in pay. I do not know whether he has read the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs impact assessment that was conducted when he was the Minister; I certainly have. It states that 42,000 casual workers are likely to see their pay default to the national minimum wage when their current employment comes to an end. The cost to the rural economy that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills impact assessment estimates—there are varying figures—are to do with the direct loss of wages, holiday pay and sick pay out of workers’ pockets.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady identify what is special about agriculture? Is it that farmers want to exploit their workers, or should there be protection for people in retail, catering and other such industries?

[Mary Creagh]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman, with 380 workers who will be affected in his constituency, is asking me what is special about agriculture; I believe that he is a farmer, so he might stand up and tell me. Agriculture is different because people are often living in rural isolation; they may have their home provided by their employer, which puts them in a uniquely vulnerable position; and, as the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) said, they are brought in from countries where English is not their first language—perhaps they do not speak English at all—and are not in a position to negotiate. Those are three reasons for starters, but I am happy to come back to that.

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[Mary Creagh]

That is right, and we all know that as we get older we are more prone to illness. A further reason why farming is different is that people are expected to work antisocial hours and long hours out in what can be very difficult conditions. We saw that with the flooding last year and when farmers and their employees had to dig lambs out of the snow in the very cold winter we have just had.

[Mr Spencer]

rose—

[Mary Creagh]

I will give way later, but I would like to make some progress.

The Government’s own figures suggest that up to £280 million could be lost over 10 years in wages and in holiday and sick pay—a quarter of a billion pounds taken out of areas represented mainly by the parties on the Government Benches, where the cost of living is estimated to be approximately £3,000 more than for those living in urban areas. Up to £35 million a year could be lost in wages alone—again, those figures are taken from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills impact assessment.

I want to know what happens when money is taken from rural families on the breadline. Who will pick up the tab? People with children will have recourse to income-related benefits, such as tax credits, council tax benefit and housing benefit. Reducing rural workers to the poverty line will take money out of workers’ pockets and transfer it directly to their employers. We, the taxpayer, will pick up the in-work welfare bill. That will add to the deficit. As a strategy for rural growth and deficit reduction, this thoughtless abolition will be catastrophic.

My second point is that the abolition will be bad for the food industry; it goes against business needs. Britain’s biggest manufacturing industry, the food production sector, needs more skilled workers. Instead, the Government are encouraging employers to race to the bottom on pay. That will see skilled workers turn their backs on the industry—and become MPs instead!

There are 2.5 million unemployed people in the United Kingdom, 1 million of whom are young people. There are 25 million unemployed people in the European Union, yet the horticulture industry still says that it needs to bring in workers under the seasonal agricultural workers scheme because it cannot find reliable British workers. It simply defies economic logic to suggest that a race to the bottom on pay is the way to attract the skilled new entrants that the industry needs.

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[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

The Agricultural Wages Board is important in constituencies such as mine—rural communities where there is already much poverty, and wages are low. Established by the Attlee Government in 1948, the board has served us for the last 65 years, setting a minimum wage and terms and conditions of employment for workers employed in agriculture. It costs the Government little to administer; I am told that it will probably cost more to abolish than to maintain.

It appears that the decision to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board is not based on financial evidence. It is yet another decision from a Government who spurn concepts such as data and evidence in favour of ideology and dogma. Once again, their adherence to ideology and dogma will have an impact on one of the hardest working and least well paid groups of workers in our rural communities.

The Government were intent on abolishing the Agricultural Wages Board from day one. The original announcement was made in July 2010. The leading party in the coalition Government, whose MPs include members of the wealthiest landowning families in this country, hardly had time to get their well-heeled shoes under their new shiny Government desks when they made their initial announcement. However, before the Government could take the final abolition decision, I understand they were told that they needed to carry out a consultation of interested parties or face a judicial review that they would probably lose on the grounds of insufficient consultation, and that they needed the consent of the delegated Welsh authorities to abolish the board.

[Mr Spencer]

Given that the hon. Lady knew about the decision in 2010, has there not been adequate time between then and now to consider all the options?

[Pat Glass]

I am not the Government, so I cannot respond to that question. Had I been the Government, I would have stuck to their rules and standards for consultation. They did not.

What did the Government do? Did they conform to Cabinet Office standards for consultation? Did they carry out an extensive 12-week consultation, avoiding main holiday periods, and making extensive efforts to ensure that all those affected, as well as all those with an interest, had an opportunity to take part? Did they carefully consider the outcomes of consultation in their final decision? Did they consult the Welsh Government, whose agreement was needed for abolition? They did none of those things; they came up with an extremely shabby plan to get round them.

The Government redefined the Agricultural Wages Board as a “regulatory reform” to avoid the necessity of even trying to get the co-operation of the Welsh Government, and they cobbled together a four-week consultation that failed to meet their own standards on consultations, issued by the Cabinet Office. Even then, 63% of those who responded to that sham and shameful consultation disagreed with abolition, so they were simply ignored.

Having failed to carry out a proper consultation, the Government decided to attach an amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill and pushed it through the House without debate. When the Government hold something that is clearly a sham consultation over four weeks instead of 12, ignore their own standards, and then ignore the results of the consultation, is it any surprise that people question, and are suspicious of, any public consultation?

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[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

This is a difficult debate, and I am grateful to the Labour Opposition for having brought it forward. In a point of order after the debate on Lords amendments to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill last week, I said how strongly I opposed our having had neither a debate or a vote on this significant matter. As I indicated earlier in an intervention, we had only limited opportunities to discuss the abolition of the AWB, among a large number of other measures, in our debates on the Public Bodies Act 2011. We were reassured throughout those debates that the House would have ample opportunity to debate the issue and come to a conclusion on it at a later stage, when a specific proposal was brought forward under the powers in schedule 1 to that Bill. I come at this debate on the basis of a significant disagreement with how the Government have handled the matter and frustration that we are shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Nevertheless, it is important to have the debate.

I listened carefully to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and did not get the impression that the AWB was being abolished because it was holding back wages and conditions for agricultural workers. In fact, I still have a strong impression that the opposite is true. I know that there has been a lot of speculation about the outcome of the abolition, but I am clear that it is not happening to enhance agricultural workers’ pay and conditions.

I also find it difficult to understand the impression that the Government are giving, given the slogan “We’re all in this together”, which they adopted in their first Budget and which I approve of entirely. One good proposal from the European Commission on the common agricultural policy is to cap the single farm payment at €300,000 and disburse the money saved in different ways. That could have been on the agenda under the previous Administration 10 years ago, but we are where we are. On the one hand, the Government are content to pay cheques of more than £1 million to large farmers who, frankly, usually do not need it. On the other hand, I fear the abolition of the AWB will mean that more public funds need to be deployed to pay the wages of agricultural workers who find their conditions and wages cut, or to pay benefits to those whose standard of living falls below a certain level. In both cases, a lot of public money is involved, in one case enriching large farmers and in the other subsidising poverty in our rural areas. I am not content with that contrast, and I will draw conclusions about it at the end of my comments.

The abolition of the AWB was not in the Liberal Democrat manifesto. It was in the Conservative party manifesto, however, and indeed the NFU made it clear in the lead-up to the last general election that it was very much in favour of the abolition of the AWB. That was certainly the case in my area, so my experience contrasts with that of the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on that point. One of the NFU’s key asks was the abolition of the AWB, yet when I raised the issue with farmers, I found that a significant number of them were opposed to that policy. They were opposed to it for the reasons the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) has outlined, such as that it would leave them in the position of having to negotiate individually. The collective approach through the AWB provided them with a framework that enabled them to avoid considerable embarrassment and difficulty or having to buy-in human resources consultants to resolve things. My hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) is right: few small-scale farmers employ agricultural workers, but those who do will encounter great difficulties if they have to negotiate these arrangements with their workers.

I have regularly worked with the NFU over many years, not least on the creation of the groceries code adjudicator, on which the Government must be warmly congratulated. I have worked with it on a wide range of issues, and often agree with it and stand shoulder to shoulder with it—but not, I am afraid, on this issue. Regrettably, on matters such as this the NFU tends to resort to becoming a large farmers’ union, rather than an all farmers’ union; I have accused it of that to its face, so I am not saying this behind its back.

Many pertinent issues have already been raised in our debate, and I shall not repeat the concerns expressed about the impact this move will have, and about the Government simply saying, “We have the national minimum wage, so we no longer need an AWB.”

[Mr Spencer]

Can the hon. Gentleman define for me what a large farm is? Is an intensively farmed three-acre poultry farm a large farm? Is a 200-acre dairy farm a large farm?

[Andrew George]

The hon. Gentleman might be drawing me into a different debate, but he knows about standard man days—I do not want that to be interpreted as a sexist term—and the number of jobs a holding generates, or requires in order to be maintained. That is calculated irrespective of the acres covered, because as his question implies, especially in less favoured areas—some of which fall within my constituency—there are geographically very large farms that have low productivity. As the hon. Gentleman rightly says, some farms that are small in acreage are intensively farmed and have high levels of productivity. He makes a good point, but the point I was making about larger farms was in the context of the fact that some—although admittedly very few—receive hundreds of thousands of pounds, or even over £1 million pounds, in public subsidy. He cannot deny that that is the case. Those sums are given to a very few large farms as a result of the arrangements through the single farm payment.

I regret finding myself in this position. I know the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), has been handed a hospital pass with this issue since taking up his post, and I am enormously grateful to him for the work he is already doing through his conversations and meetings with people in the sector. Despite this regrettable decision, he is working with them to try to identify opportunities for voluntary agreements within the sector. I hope that will serve to provide some of the protections which I fear will be lost to agricultural workers as a result of this Government decision.

There is something further that I regret. Normally, I feel enormously disappointed by Opposition day debates, because they usually degenerate into rather tribal, finger-pointing and teasing events, in which it is not possible to take the Opposition line on an issue because of how the debate has been handled. I regret that on this occasion—partly as a result of how the Government have handled the matter so far, by not giving us an opportunity for a debate or a vote—after a considered debate, I will be voting against the Government in the Division.

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[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

I am grateful for that guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. Let me begin by drawing the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

We should recognise the progress that agriculture has made over the last 70 years. We are now well fed as a nation, without the worry of food security. We should recognise what a good job agriculture, agricultural workers and farmers have done in feeding the whole of Europe during those 70 years since the second world war, and, when we compare the industry of today with agriculture in the 1940s, we should recognise how different it is now, and how different are the relationships of agricultural staff with their employers.

The first argument that we heard from the Opposition—that abolishing the Agricultural Wages Board would not save any money—wholly missed the point of the debate. This is not about saving cash for the Government; it is about recognising the changing dynamic of agricultural work in the United Kingdom in a modern setting, and recognising the safeguards that have been introduced by other Governments and other parties. The minimum wage established a floor for the wages of all workers and has given them wage security, while changes in the legislation governing gangmasters have protected agricultural workers who are employed by them. The Agricultural Wages Board has become redundant. It is no longer a necessity because there are other safeguards, irrespective of the changes in the dynamic of agriculture.

Let me draw a few comparisons. If an agricultural worker who is charged with the responsibility of driving quarter of a million pounds’ worth of combine harvester makes a mistake in setting the sieves, much of the crop may go over the back of the combine. For the farmer, it is vital that the right member of staff, with the right skills, is sitting in that seat to protect his crop. I do not understand why a warehouse worker driving a forklift truck for Amazon does not need extra protection, but the combine harvester driver does.

A potato harvester can probably harvest £50,000 worth of crop, so damage to just 10% of that crop could cost a farm business £5,000 a day. Again, for the farmer it is vital that the right member of staff is driving that tractor and helping to ensure that the business is well looked after. If the right member of staff with the right skills is to sit on that seat, the farmer must pay him the right amount. The farmer must give him the right terms and conditions, or else he will walk off to another farmer.

The market for skills of that kind is driving agricultural wages to a much higher level than was provided for by the Agricultural Wages Board. Agriculture as an industry has changed dramatically since the 1960s. The House must recognise that.

Another argument we heard was that agricultural workers are particularly vulnerable because they live in tied cottages. I do not understand why the Opposition do not make the same argument for public house managers who work for a brewery and whose home is the public house itself. Why do they not require the extra protection farm workers supposedly have from the Agricultural Wages Board? The manager of a post office often has a flat above the business. Their accommodation is tied, so why do they not require extra protection? Double standards are in play.

Agriculture has moved on. The key question is whether the Opposition would overturn the abolition if they were in power. They were challenged on that point several times during the debate and on three occasions they refused the opportunity to answer. There is some cynicism on the Government Benches. Is it a political game? Is it about making a political point rather than a genuine one about improving the lot of people working in rural communities?

As a number of speakers want to follow me, I shall keep my comments as short as possible. I hope that in summing up, the Opposition speaker will address some of the points I made.