Rural Communities

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Albert Owen]

Absolutely. It is good to have the hon. Gentleman back on-side. He and I debated this issue during the previous Parliament and my arguments were very consistent when I sat on the Government Benches. I am glad to see that, now he does not have ministerial responsibility, he is again championing those off-grid, which is the next topic I wish to address.

Energy Ministers are taking the off-grid issue seriously, but not enough practical steps have been taken. I am very pleased that my party is now calling for something for which I have been campaigning for some time: for the energy regulator to take responsibility for those not on the mains grid. This is an historic element of privatisation. When the energy markets for gas and electricity were set up, they encompassed the old generators that were on-grid and left an unregulated off-grid, which means that many people are paying a lot more in energy costs for their gas supplements.

When the Government, the energy companies and, indeed, the regulator talk about discounts and dual-fuel discounts—this issue affects every Member who represents a rural community—that does not apply to people who do not have mains gas. They are paying considerably more for their energy. The average price is a luxury for many people in rural areas. They pay considerably more, not only for the distribution and transmission cost, but for not benefiting from the energy companies.

I have been pressing for many years, with some albeit limited success, for the energy companies—the electricity companies, in this case—to give loyalty bonuses to people who stay with them. It is perverse that the energy market encourages switching and gives dual-fuel deals when it could and should give loyalty bonuses and help those in rural areas who do not have access to dual fuel.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman about the off-grid situation in rural areas. There also does not seem to be enough competition between oil companies to deliver heating oil. Many constituents of ours will probably never get on to mains gas, but heating oil is an alternative. We have to get more competition and get the prices down for people in rural areas who use oil for their heating.

[Albert Owen]

The hon. Gentleman raises a very important point. Many Members, including those from the Cornwall and Devon area, have been campaigning on that issue for some time. The Office of Fair Trading called for a number of inquiries into it and made a recommendation to the Competition Commission. Unfortunately, it did not find that there is no competition, but I think that is blindingly obvious. That is why I welcome—I am not just making a party political point—the Labour party’s intention that Ofgem, the regulator, look at off-grid as well, because it could give the same protection to off-grid customers. It is there to champion consumers and businesses, and that would be a good, positive step forward.

Hon. Members from rural areas will know that many of their constituents try to buy their fuel before winter. In line with a cross-party campaign, I urge the Government to look at mechanisms to allow people in rural areas to get their winter fuel payments earlier, so that they can buy in advance and do not have to pay premium prices for coal, oil and other energy sources. I have pressed my party on that important point, and it has agreed, if it comes into government in 2015, to bring that measure in. I know there are IT issues, but I am sure that postcodes could be used to distribute payments earlier than happens now.

I raise the issue of winter fuel payments because there have been lots of delays and glitches, including in non-rural areas, with people receiving their payments. That is certainly the case in my constituency and those of colleagues I have spoken to about the issue. If the software was amended, people in rural areas would have the advantage of receiving payments earlier so that they can buy in bulk earlier, at prices that suit them.

I have covered the issues relating to off-grid customers and the distribution companies, but I welcome the important energy investment that will be made in my constituency in north-west Wales. I am not someone who stands here and picks winners. There is a nuclear power station in my constituency, and I support moves to low carbon as well as the new build there. However, we have to have the right balance of biomass and other forms of renewables—it is important to have gas and clean coal in that balance—and my constituency is certainly playing its part. I make no apology for repeating that it is unfair that people in our areas pay more for the end product.

Having highlighted energy issues, I want to move on to fuel—petrol and diesel—which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton. In previous decades in this House, many people were encouraged to buy diesel, because it was more energy efficient, with cars able to do a greater mileage on diesel than on petrol. The price of diesel has now of course gone up considerably, which is hampering businesses and individuals in rural areas. There is a massive difference in the price of petrol and diesel on some independent and supermarket forecourts.

I very much welcome the Government’s moving the fuel rebate forward, but it does not cover all rural areas. When they brought it in, there should have been a rule for the whole United Kingdom; it should not have been done piecemeal. I am sorry to make a slightly partisan point, but Scottish Liberal Democrat seats should not have been in the first wave, with other areas having to play catch-up and make applications. There should have been proper criteria covering the whole of rural Britain and Northern Ireland.

Fishing Industry

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Doran]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. All of us are ashamed of the level of discards, but at the end of the day, that has been part—

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Doran]

Of course.

[Neil Parish]

Mr Deputy Speaker is frowning at me, but I will try to be brief. Does not the hon. Gentleman think that over the years the problem of discards has been seen as far too difficult to deal with, but that we must now get stuck into finding a method of ensuring that we can land what is caught? I do not agree with him when he says, “Oh well, this, that or the other”; in the end, we have got to do it.

[Mr Doran]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman entirely. I had not quite finished my sentence, but we are all opposed to discards: it is criminal to throw good fish back into the sea. We have a major problem in this country in that the majority of our fisheries are mixed ones, but the European Commission operates on the basis of species and does not take account of mixed fisheries. We have not resolved that problem, but it needs to be worked on, so he is absolutely right.

To return to the issues that should be considered, the NFFO states that, in what is apparently now being formulated, there is a potential problem for

“choke stocks (where the exhaustion of the quota for a minor species prevents vessels from catching their main economic species).”

There is also the potential

“to put into reverse the progress that has been made over the last decade in reducing fishing mortality and achieving high levels of compliance”,

which is a serious issue. Other problems involve:

“Treatment of species with high survival rates”;

and, finally:

“Whether Norway will sanction quota flexibility for North Sea…stocks.”

I will be interested to hear from the Minister about that.

I do not want to sound totally negative, because it is important that we are not, but there are serious concerns. We have always been concerned about EU bureaucracy, but it seems to have reached a different level in relation to the fishing industry because of the involvement of the European Parliament. The prospect of a rejuvenated fishing industry under a sensible new system of regional management that operates properly, in which the TACs are determined at a relatively local level and which takes account of discards and all the rest of it, is being much delayed. It is important that the Minister responds to the points that I have raised, but also that we hear what approach he will take on these issues at the December Council.

Most of the communications that I have received from the fishing industry in my 20-odd years of life as a Member of Parliament representing a fishing city have been pretty depressing. That is part of the strategy that is adopted by the industry. However, in my recent discussions with Barrie Deas of the NFFO, he was good enough to supply some good news stories and I think it is worth reporting those. The NFFO states that

“the general trend in fishing mortality (fishing pressure) right across the North East Atlantic (including the North Sea and Baltic) since the year 2000 has been downwards. In fact a reduction of about 50% across all the main species groups has been observed by ICES.”

It is important to recognise that much of that is to do with the change in culture among the fishermen in the fleet. I am delighted that, under the guidance of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, the Scottish fleet has been in the vanguard of that.

Barrie Deas gave me a few examples of good news stories. The biomass for North sea plaice is

“above anything seen in the historic record.”

Western and North sea hake

“has seen a dramatic resurgence, is seen now in areas where it has not been abundant and justifies a 50% increase in the TAC.”

The Minister can take that information with him. There are similar good news stories about other species of fish.

There is good news on the fisheries science partnership. For years, it has been obvious that there is a big gulf between the fishermen and the scientists who present the evidence to the European Commission that determines the likely outcome for TACs each year. The fact that there is a serious partnership that is supported by Government and by various EU institutions, and that projects are arising from that, is certainly very good news.

I will finish on that point. I simply say to the Minister that this is an important debate for those of us who still have a fishing industry in our communities and it is an important debate for the country. There are many issues in which we might want some involvement during the year, but this is the main debate in which we have an opportunity to focus on the industry. Members of the all-party parliamentary fisheries group had very good relations with his predecessor and were sorry to see him go. If the Minister can keep up to his standards, we will all be grateful.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) and others on securing this timely debate. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the debate to take place in the Chamber so that there can be more contributions than there have been in such debates in Westminster Hall.

I welcome the Minister and the shadow Minister to their new responsibilities. I thank them for the contributions that they made as members of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and remind them that they both participated in our excellent report in response to the proposals for the reform of the common fisheries policy.

I join the hon. Member for Aberdeen North in commemorating those who have lost their lives in the fishing industry. Fishing and farming are the two most dangerous industries and they both suffer fatalities and other losses. We should recognise that element of the work that fishermen do in bringing the fish to our plates. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) who, despite the personal loss she suffered, continues to take a great interest in the fisheries industry.

Today’s debate is timely, and I pay tribute to fishing ports across the country. The port of Filey has historically enjoyed coble boats—that is why we have Coble Landing—and when I was first elected, six families still depended on fisheries off the North sea coast from Filey port. Sadly, however, for a number of reasons—not least that they needed a trailer to bring the coble boats on to shore—the cost has been prohibitive, and I understand that they now fish mostly out of Bridlington, which I think is the largest shellfish port in England, if not the UK.

The historic common fisheries policy agreement that was agreed by the European Parliament this week is to be welcomed and paves the way for new reforms to take effect on 1 January 2014. Notwithstanding that, I wish my hon. Friend the Minister well in his overnight negotiations. I hope he will be well equipped with refreshments to keep himself in good order, as he will obviously need to be on top form.

[Neil Parish]

Does my hon. Friend agree that although it is great that the European system is now grinding into place to ban discards—I wish the Minister well in that—the process must be kept going and indeed sped up? My knowledge of the EU, and I suspect that of my hon. Friend, is that it will take an awfully long time to get to a situation where we can stop discarding healthy fish. We need to speed up the system.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I agree with him. The opinion of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on this deal was published in February 2012 and the Government response in July 2012. It has taken three years of difficult negotiations, and I commend the fisheries Minister and his predecessor on the lead we took in securing a significant reform of what was deemed a fundamentally flawed common fisheries policy.

Let me say why the reform is so important. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) and the hon. Member for Aberdeen North mentioned discards, and it is key that we do not replace discards at sea with discards on land. The Committee’s report concluded robustly that we must be imaginative about bringing fish on to land—having been born in Scotland, disappeared, and then returned there, I can say that different fish are eaten in Scotland from those eaten in England. If we can extend the palate and consumer taste to different types of fish and create new markets for existing fish, that would be a great way forward. As the report noted, celebrity chefs and others have a part to play in that by creating a novelty feature for dishes such as pollock, which I am sure would not be so widely eaten had it not been for chefs and others paving the way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss McIntosh]

Much as the hon. Gentleman is my friend, I am always cautious when he tempts me to go in a particular direction. If I may, I think we shall discuss that over a cup of tea.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend talks about Spain’s access to what, historically, were our waters. One problem is that once there is a common fisheries policy everybody muscles in, nobody more so than Spain. Spain will hoover up fish not only off our shores, but off Africa and anywhere she can find them. She is a menace and I am quite happy to say that in this House.

[Miss McIntosh]

As some of my best friends are Spanish, I hope they are not following the debate too closely. I am sure Spain would wish reciprocal access rights for our fisherman in its waters. Perhaps we can reach agreement on that basis.

The new laws will allow countries working together regionally—under my definition of regionally, which does not necessarily include Spain—to move away from micro-management to true regionalisation and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) said, to a legally binding commitment to fish at sustainable levels.

Our report was so good that I would like to highlight one or two points. We called for decentralisation, rather than the Commission handing down, and for more research into selective fishing methods, which are important. We called for a cipher mechanism to reallocate fishing rights away from slipper skippers, and we called, again, for a register. My hon. Friend the Minister would not forgive me if I did not mention again our call for a register of who owns the current quotas.

Badger Cull

Neil Parish Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir.

I make it clear for the record that I am a long-standing trustee of the League Against Cruel Sports. I want the cull to be abandoned because I do not believe there is any justification for its continuation. Indeed, prior to the recent cull, there was a debate in the main Chamber in which we implored the Government not to proceed. We made it clear that there is no evidence to support a cull. I said that the cull was likely, according to the scientific evidence, to make matters worse.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman says that there is no justification for the cull, so why is it that the Republic of Ireland only got control of tuberculosis once it started culling badgers? This is about badgers infecting cattle with TB, and we need to react strongly. I entirely reject what the hon. Gentleman says.

[Chris Williamson]

I will develop my argument, but the hon. Gentleman is misquoting the statistics relating to Ireland. If we dig a little deeper into the situation in Ireland, it is pretty clear that north of the border, where I believe culling has not taken place, the situation improved considerably more than it did in the south of Ireland.

Fly-Grazing of Horses

Neil Parish Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds]

Absolutely. My right hon. Friend brings up one of the most terrible cases. I think that 2008, when the horses were seized in Amersham, was a high point for RSPCA horse seizures, and I pay tribute to the organisation’s work. I should also say that it has been of great assistance to me as I have prepared for this debate.

There are four senses in which the practice of fly-grazing is a terrible problem. First, of course, there is often the terrible condition of the horses themselves, which suffer neglect and malnutrition. Secondly, when a farmer’s field is being grazed on, it is also a problem for the farmers. Grazing, where it is not authorised, is theft; it is theft of a farmer’s livelihood. Quite often, of course, the farmer is left to deal with the problem. Although they are the victim and not the perpetrator of the crime, they assume some responsibility for the horses. Thirdly, fly-grazing is a burden for those who must enforce the law, and for the charities that care for the horses. Currently, those charities find themselves significantly over-burdened as a result. Finally, fly-grazing is a great problem for the public—there are issues of public safety if, for example, horses get on to the public highway.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I also congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does he agree that one of the great problems is the traceability of these ponies and horses? We must ensure that we know where they are. We have 70 or 80 passport-issuing agencies; there is no central database. We need to know where the horses are and who they belong to if we are to take action to stop fly-grazing and the welfare problems.

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend rightly raises one of the significant underlying issues, and it is one that I will return to later.

There are three key pieces of legislation in this arena. First, there is the Animal Welfare Act 2006. However, that applies only where there is significant suffering; I am told that quite a “high-hurdle” test must be passed for it to be used. Secondly, there is the Highways Act 1980, which relates to cases in which animals are on or by the public highway. Thirdly, there is the Animals Act 1971, which is a means of getting horses off private land, although the process involved is quite onerous; I will discuss that process later. Significantly, there are also a number of private Acts that apply in different parts of the country, including the Mid Glamorgan County Council Act 1987 and, in my own area, the Hampshire County Council Act 1972.

What is the process if a farmer discovers that, say, a dozen horses have appeared on their land? They should call the local authority, which may check the horses. In doing so, it often finds that there is no microchip to allow traceability. The local authority then puts up a notice to say, “Contact us if these horses are yours.” The owner then has two weeks to come forward. Then, just before the two weeks are up, the horses miraculously disappear; hon. Members will be familiar with the situation.

Water Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Miss McIntosh]

I do regret the amount of time that it is taking.

The Select Committee was very disappointed to hear how little maintenance and dredging of watercourses has been taking place. While it is always pleasing to see capital expenditure increase, the evidence that we heard was more than anecdotal: it is an absolute fact that, were there to be regular maintenance and dredging of the main and even the minor watercourses, floods could be prevented. I urge the Government to spend more than just £20 million per annum in England for that purpose. I also urge them to allow the drainage boards, which do such excellent work, to keep the money rather than passing it to the Environment Agency, and to agree a work programme with the agency but use their own drainage board engineers for the maintenance and dredging.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I agree wholeheartedly that drainage boards could do much more work. The money that they spend often goes a great deal further than the excessive amount spent by some public bodies. As the Secretary of State is aware, the Parrett and Tone rivers in Somerset are completely silted up and they need to be dredged quickly.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am sure that the whole House, including the Secretary of State, has heard what my hon. Friend said. Dredging little and often can prevent floods. The drainage boards have an army of volunteers, a huge fount of knowledge and, probably, more engineers than the Environment Agency.

I am delighted that the Government have authorised the pilot schemes, and the Select Committee will observe the outcome very closely. I commend the Pickering pilot project, which is one of those schemes at which this country excels. It has already slowed the flow, it is creating new peat bogs, and it is holding water back so that it cannot flood Pickering. If we can succeed with a combination of slowing the flow and building a reservoir, not only will Pickering be safe from flooding, but the benefits of the pilot can be used elsewhere, and resilience to flooding and possible water shortages can be improved.

I believe that the 2014 price review gives us an opportunity to invite Ofwat to reward innovation, which it is not doing at the moment. Ofwat should invite water companies to show that they can bring positive benefits to consumers by creating innovative flood defence and water supply schemes like the Pickering project, and to include such proposals in their business plans. I regret that that did not happen in earlier price reviews and this is a unique opportunity to do that.

I also invite the Government to engage much earlier with EU directives. I yield to no one in respect of the benefits they can bring, but they can be very costly. If we sign up to very short-term, tight timetables, that adds to the costs. My right hon. Friend will be aware of the EU water framework directive, the bathing water directive, the drinking water directive, the urban waste water treatment directive and others. We have to get in there early and put our views across. Their aims and objectives are laudable, but they must be affordable and done on a realistic timetable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

There is provision in the Bill to establish an inset regime and allow new entrants to design innovative infrastructure, which can link into the water system. Moreover, under the capital allowance system, farmers can invest in new reservoirs and have the right to give the surplus of that water to their water companies. In dire circumstances, the Environment Agency can purchase that water to keep rivers flowing. Real opportunity exists for people. I am not saying that that will resolve our water resilience issues; many farmers will need to build many reservoirs for that to happen. None the less, there is a genuine opportunity.

I have one plea. Yes, we can get involved in lengthy debates about whether we should have a primary or a secondary sustainability duty, or whether the robust new resilience duty—I urge hon. Members to read about that—will provide an added incentive; but if the rivers do not flow, our reservoirs are empty and our economy suffers, we should be absolutely determined to concentrate on the outcomes. I appeal to Members in this Chamber and in the other place not to get stuck on the tokenism of any duty, but to consider the outcome that it can deliver. I am relatively agnostic about whether Ofwat should have a primary or secondary duty to deliver sustainability. I am much more concerned about the outcomes, and I have yet to be convinced that just changing the wording will make a huge amount of difference. A really important gain in all this is the resilience duty on Ofwat.

[Neil Parish]

Like other Members, I thank my hon. Friend for all the work that he did on the Bill when he was Minister. Does he not feel that the one thing we are missing in this country is the recycling of water? It would be good to use recycled water to grow crops, as it contains a huge amount of nutrients. When we get a wet year, we forget about all the dry years that we have had or may have in the future.

[Richard Benyon]

My hon. Friend is right. I see this in household terms: my simple view is that if a builder wants to build 1,000 houses in the Test valley—I do not know why I am picking on the Test valley; I could pick on any number of catchments in the south or east of England—for that to be considered sustainable development, he should have to prove to his local authority that he is hardwiring into his thinking recycling rain water, greywater systems and permeable membranes outside the houses. In fact, he should think of everything to ensure that the development’s water demands are as low as possible.

An important change is being made that will assist investment in our water sector, by cracking the problem with the investment cycle that we have faced for years. I am grateful to British Water—the organisation that represents supply chain companies—for drawing my attention to how investment fell off a cliff edge a year or so before the end of a price review period. That is a problem. Britain is losing jobs, losing skills to abroad and losing much-needed infrastructure investment. Three changes will make a difference in that regard. The first is the resilience duty, which I have already mentioned. The second is the requirement on water companies to invest for the long term, particularly through the 20-year reviews of their water needs. The third is the need for a six-year investment programme, which is a major step forward. Over time, the cycle of investment will level out rather than fall off that cliff.

We need to think beyond the Bill on sustainability. I am pleased, for example, that improvements to the building regulations include a standard daily usage of 125 litres per head. The code for sustainable homes refers to 105 litres per head. We use 155 litres per head in this country—a figure higher than almost anywhere in Europe. We must consider the demand side as well as the supply side.

I hope that that clause on flood insurance goes through with the support of all parties. All Members with constituents who live at risk of floods feel strongly that the statement of principles, worthy though it might have been when it was drawn up, was full of faults. There was no affordability element. Our constituents face excess charges that are at times more than £10,000—an impossible situation that cannot be allowed to continue.

I have the scars of the negotiations on Flood Re on my back—I pay full tribute to the ABI for the constructive way in which it negotiated—but I think we have reached a point at which we can address the needs of the 500,000 households that are at the highest risk. It will limit the cost, and as best it can, it will link that limit to people’s ability to pay. Linking the scheme to council tax banding is the right way to do that. Excess charges will be capped at somewhere between £250 and £500. That is a major win for those people who come to see us in our surgeries and tell us that every time it rains their stress levels rise considerably.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Tony Baldry]

That credit union is a model one. This will be a generational change; it will not happen overnight. We all need to support the credit union movement to ensure that those on low incomes and those who may have difficulties accessing credit do not fall into the hands of loan sharks. We are determined to take forward the building up of the credit union movement in this country.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Following on from the credit union question, the Church of England has many assets and quite a lot of cash investments, could it not invest that directly in a credit union to help the situation?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

My hon. Friend will find that something like 45 bishops in at least 31 dioceses have already been involved in a range of activities to support and raise awareness of credit unions, including investing in them.

Food Contamination

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is good to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Osborne. I welcome the new Minister to his place; we worked well together on the Select Committee and I look forward to him having views entirely consistent with those he had in Committee now he is a Minister. I am partly teasing him, but I look forward to working with him. I enjoyed his friendship on the Committee. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), the Chair of the Select Committee, on securing the debate, because it is necessary for us not to forget exactly what happened.

I want to concentrate on the consequences and on the many lessons that we need to learn. For many years, I have been saying that we have not had proper labelling of the origins of processed food, especially meat products, and the contamination has highlighted that hugely. Basically, the product was travelling all across Europe from the Republic of Ireland, Poland and Romania into Luxembourg and France—it was travelling all over the place. The trail—exporting from one country and importing to another—was almost impossible to follow.

As the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) highlighted, the value of the processed meat is key. If someone bought a joint of beef and a joint of horse—we cannot do that in this country, but in many European countries they can—they would immediately be able to tell the difference. If we minced them up and put them in a burger, however, I suspect that when we actually looked at it physically, we would not see a great deal of difference. If horse meat is trading at a quarter to a third of the price of beef, it is tempting to the unscrupulous in the food processing industry to substitute one for the other.

Not only the Government but the large retailers should keep a check on the situation. If retailers are buying beef burgers for less than the cost of the beef that should be in them, they should ask how on earth a company can produce that product for that price. That is a lesson for the industry and the big retailers to learn. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire probably shares my view that although the big retailers are necessary, they have used their muscle over the years to drive down prices for primary producers and farmers. They have spent their lives doing it. This time they drove the price down too far, and people came in who said, “Okay, these big retailers want cheap burgers; well, we’ll mix in a bit of horse meat, and it’ll be fine.” That is where questions need to be asked.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton made the case that the Government need enough public analysts, but retailers also need to employ such people or franchise out the work to somebody else. When I go into a large supermarket, I expect to buy a product that is made of what it says on the label. That is the retailer’s responsibility; the Minister may well make that point later. Yes, it is the Government’s responsibility, but it is also very much the responsibility of the retailer.

I noticed that the Chair made a bit of a face when I said that one could tell the difference between a joint of horse meat and a joint of beef. Ethically, we in this country do not eat horse meat, but it is eaten in many countries across Europe, and it is legal. It is necessary to be able to slaughter horses for meat. There are so many horses in this country, some with huge welfare problems, that if we could not slaughter them, the welfare problems would be even larger. I would much rather those horses be slaughtered humanely in this country than taken on vast journeys across the continent in poor conditions to be slaughtered. We must remember that slaughtering and trading horse meat are not crimes in themselves.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The hon. Gentleman is making a good and cogent point. We must guard not only against inhumane transport but against the possibility that imports of horse meat from places that previously discarded the slaughter of horses, such as the United States—they are now slaughtered in other countries instead—might find their way back to us through Poland or the Czech Republic, with added ingredients such as phenylbutazone, known as bute.

[Neil Parish]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It leads me neatly on to the fact that, as I said, horse meat must be traceable. It is not only a case of what is imported into this country. In America, there are many racehorses and other sorts of horse that are more likely to have been treated with all sorts of drugs throughout their lives. We must be careful of that.

We in this country must also be careful to ensure that we know where the horses that we slaughter have come from. At the moment, under the passport system, many horses have one, two or several passports, one of which is clean and says that the horse has not been injected with anything, and another one of which may have been used when the horse has been injected with various drugs throughout its life. We need a better passport system and a central database, so that we know where horses come from, to ensure that when they are slaughtered, we know that they are healthy. Although we may not eat the meat, it will be exported for someone else to eat. It is essential.

I believe that some good things will come out of this situation. As other Members have said, it would have been terrible if the contamination had led to a public health issue, but fortunately it did not. One or two horses slaughtered were found to have levels of phenylbutazone, but not enough to hurt anybody eating the meat. We must learn to ensure that horse meat is traceable in future, not because it should be mixed with beef and sold fraudulently but because the meat should be safe.

The other great lesson to be learned concerns the traceability of our own meat. People like farm-assured schemes, such as the red tractor promoted by the National Farmers Union and many others. As soon as horsegate—the problem with horse meat in beef burgers—occurred, people wanted meat from this country. I do not wish to be churlish, but Tesco did not decide to source all its meat from the British Isles out of the goodness of its heart; it decided that that was a good way to make consumers buy at Tesco.

[Roger Williams]

Was my hon. Friend amazed, like me, to hear that Tesco has said that British lamb is now out of season? I find that extraordinary, given that the UK produces lamb in season all year round.

[Neil Parish]

The fact is that for most grass-fed lamb from Wales, the west country and other parts of the country, the height of the season is exactly now, from September onwards. When I used to produce lambs, I did not feed them a lot of concentrates; I fattened them on grass, and they came out in September, October and November. Whoever put out that particular press release probably got it slightly wrong.

That takes me back to the fact that although Tesco wants to source British meat, which I welcome, it does so from a commercial point of view. Therefore, having systems in place to ensure the traceability of that meat is important. However, there is also a knock-on effect. At a certain conference in Manchester—I will not mention which one it was—I was talking to the poultry industry. Again, Tesco has decided to source all its poultry meat from the UK, which is great, but the problem is that it is absorbing all the poultry meat that we produce, so we need to produce more. To produce more poultry meat, of course, we need more poultry units, and to build more poultry units we need planning permission. All those things have a knock-on effect.

It is the same with the pig industry. We need more pigs and pork so, again, we need planning permission. Those Members who represent rural constituents will find that when a piggery or a poultry house must be built next door, individuals do not always welcome it with open arms. I understand that the Minister is not responsible for planning, but the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs should make the case if we are to have more British meat. I am a great supporter of it; we are only 52% self-sufficient in meat, so there is much more that we could do. Production of poultry and pigs in particular can be built up quickly, but again, we must ensure that we have enough premises where they can be produced.

Many more people now ensure that they buy locally produced and British food, which is a great asset, but I also want them to be sure—again, this is a lesson to be learned—that when they go into a big retailer or other shop, they can pick up a product, especially a processed product, and be absolutely certain where it has come from. Sometimes my wife comes back with a product that she presents to me and says, “Where does that come from?” I read the label and it is more confusing than enlightening about where it has come from. I urge the Minister, newly in post, to realise that labelling of country of origin—knowing where a product is from—is fundamentally important. If it has been imported, so be it, but say so. If products are from all over the world, fine, but say so, so that people have a choice. I do not like the old system that states “product of the EU” and “processed in the UK”, and displays a Union Jack. Everybody picks it up, convinced that it is entirely a British product, when it is not. It is perfectly legal to do that, and that is what happens.

With the reports that we have had and what we have heard, we would all accept, to a degree, that we got away with it. It was not perfect, but we got away with it, despite the fact that it was a fraud and we were eating horse when we should have been eating beef. However, nobody was injured. We need to wake up to the fact that horse meat and slaughter need to be much more traceable. When people pick up products, particularly processed foods, they need to know exactly where they have come from. We want to ensure that the supermarkets that genuinely want to have British products are stocking them and that they have not come from somewhere else in the world. We expect our Minister, newly in post, to guarantee that all that will happen.

We can learn positive lessons. The fact that people now want to eat more home-produced meat is a good thing. Let us be absolutely certain in future that that is exactly what we are eating. Although Government have a responsibility, so do the large retailers and the processors that manufacture and process the products. They are the ones that acted illegally. Let us not forget that, whoever was at fault, it was illegal. It was fraud.

Finally, although I agree with the other hon. Members who have spoken, I fear that in the end we will find one or two small processors here and there who will be hung out to dry, and the rest of the larger processors and others will largely be left untouched. Certainly the Irish Government have been rather reticent about prosecuting anybody. I think that that is the tactful way of putting it. Also—the point was made earlier—when a member state of the European Union is having a problem, it should be brought to the notice of our authorities and others much more quickly, so that we can take action. There was definitely a slowness in the whole process. I look forward to the new Minister sorting it all out, and I again welcome him to his new post.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s intervention and the focus that she and the Select Committee have put on not only the FSA, but the overall issue of food governance and the integrity and coherence of it. We have repeatedly made it clear from the early days when its responsibilities were split up that we had concerns about what might happen. Her Committee’s report and the report of the National Audit Office have made it clear that those concerns did not cause the crisis, but contributed to a delayed reaction, which I will come to in a moment. There is confusion at national, local and intergovernmental level. I shall not call for a review today. I shall echo her call for action and for the Government to introduce proposals to change the structure of food governance.

Tesco, the UK’s market-leading supermarket, notably and admirably fessed up to its responsibilities. It said, “We get it.” It took out full-page advertisements coinciding—coincidentally, I am sure—with the NFU conference in February, and it is seeking to re-engineer its supply chains and get closer to primary producers. It has a way to go, as has already been mentioned. I visited Tesco’s headquarters and we went through this in detail. Although it has a journey to make, I do not doubt its sincerity and ambition to do so. It is consumer-focused; there is a reason why it is doing this. Other large retailers have already developed shorter supply chains or other methods of ensuring the provenance of their food.

In the early stages, many took a different approach and frankly said, “Not us, guvnor.” They pointed to abroad or to smaller suppliers, international criminals, other third parties and, frankly, anybody but themselves. It is clear that the criminal activities of some have damaged public confidence in the whole supply chain. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee spoke for many in the country, when it reported that it could only

“conclude that British consumers have been cynically and systematically duped in pursuit of profit by elements within the food industry.”

Whether that was criminality, negligence, complicity or failure of due diligence through the whole supply chain, from major processors and supermarkets down to the very small players, all were to varying degrees at fault in causing the failures, and all have responsibility in rectifying them and restoring trust and confidence.

I welcome the letter that I received yesterday from ABP, a dominant player in the UK and European beef processing market, which tells me that it supplies more than 20 countries and has a network of over 15,000 farmers. In the letter, the company acknowledges—it cannot deny—the presence of horsemeat in some of its frozen beef products over the past year, but states:

“It was certainly not an activity sanctioned by ABP in any way at any level”.

It goes on to make it clear that the company is not subject to any ongoing investigations.

In some ways, it is unfair to pick out ABP, because it was not alone in a complex and vulnerable supply chain that put beef adulterated with horsemeat and, for good measure, with trace elements—thank goodness, only trace elements—of phenylbutazone or bute into our homes, hospitals, schools and canteens, as well as, through food distribution companies, into Royal Ascot and the royal household. When it comes to food adulteration, we are genuinely—and right royally—all in it together.

As the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton said, those who came out well from the crisis were the butchers, local abattoirs, and those in local food networks and short supply chains, whose customers could prove where their food came from and what it was. The upside of the crisis is that it has reignited a major debate about our relationship with the food we eat, which I hope will lead to changes in how we produce and value our food.

Much of the modern supply chain is long, complex and international, with multiple handling and processing operations and multiple opportunities for adulteration. The lesson for those in wider supply chains, especially the major and dominant supermarkets, processors and distributors, is that no one can escape responsibility for the mess we got ourselves into or avoid responsibility for restoring trust in those supply chains. It is not good enough to say, “It wasn’t us, guvnor,” because as far as the consumer is concerned, it was.

I want to turn to the issues of food governance identified by the Select Committee’s two reports and highlighted in a timely report by the National Audit Office, on 10 October, entitled, “Food safety and authenticity in the processed meat supply chain”.

I tell the Minister that the Government must clearly now take responsibility: they are also in the dock and must fess up. They must answer criticisms of their role in failing to ensure effective governance of the food manufacturing sector. Although I commend the industry for working alongside UK, Irish and EU agencies to strengthen the testing and tracking of food products in response to the horsemeat crisis, I cannot yet commend the UK Government, whose response to the crisis was hampered by structural problems of their own making. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, of which the Minister was a member, put that succinctly in its first report, stating that

“the current contamination crisis has caught the FSA and Government flat-footed and unable to respond effectively within structures designed primarily to respond to threats to human health.”

The National Audit Office’s No. 1 key finding was:

“A split since 2010 in the responsibilities for food policy in England has led to confusion among stakeholders and no obvious benefit to those implementing controls.”

That split in responsibilities is, of course, the one that was devised and implemented in 2010 not by the Minister, who is only just in post, but by his coalition Government. They are the architect of their own misfortune, but more importantly, of what others have described as the flat-footed response to the food adulteration scandal. The food sector and the consumer deserve better. It is not the fault of the FSA, but of the Government who split its responsibilities.

[Neil Parish]

I accept, to some degree, the hon. Gentleman’s assertions about changes to the FSA, but there had been no testing of horsemeat for 10 years or more, and the situation arose only when we started testing horsemeat. What matters is not the structure, but the fact that we were just not testing. All through his watch and that of his Government, nobody was testing horsemeat. That is why I think that he is being a little disingenuous, if I may say so.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I utterly refute the idea of my being disingenuous, because I am citing the words, evidence and recommendations of the Select Committee and National Audit Office reports. The criticisms are not mine, although I entirely agree with them, because we said the same from the outset, after the FSA was split up. I am not being disingenuous, but frank: I am saying what I have consistently said month after month, and year after year, and that is what our position has been.

I understand what the hon. Gentleman says, but I am hammering the Government because governance is central to how we resolve the situation. We can ask the industry to do many things—we have done so, and the industry is getting on with them—and agencies are helping it, but unless we resolve the fundamental issue of how to bring together the entirety of the food industry coherently and not split it between Departments, we will be back here again. That is what his Committee concluded.

The Government response to the concerns is worryingly complacent. The document states, on page 7:

“The Government is concerned that the Committee may have misunderstood the status and constitution of the FSA”,

and it then defends the FSA in the following three paragraphs. If the Select Committee has misunderstood the FSA, so have the National Audit Office and many other well-informed, critical friends of the food industry who want the Government to look more fundamentally at the FSA and to review the cack-handed way in which its responsibilities were diced and sliced in 2010.

The Government should adopt the Tesco approach: fess up to this aspect of their responsibility, learn the lessons that they must learn and deal properly with the role of the FSA and food governance, instead of tinkering at the edges. It takes a big man or woman to accept that they were wrong, but I hope that the new Minister, in whom I have confidence, will be able to do so.

Let me ask the Minister some questions that stem from the Select Committee and National Audit Office reports. Coming new into the post, does he accept, from what he has looked at, that the Government’s and the FSA’s early response to the crisis was flat-footed and slow, as has been said, partly thanks to the Government’s machinery of government changes? Does he accept that the Government’s decision to split the FSA roles directly led to confusion and a lack of clarity about responsibilities at the outset of the crisis, both between Whitehall Departments and agencies and between local government enforcement and the FSA?

Does the Minister accept that, as highlighted by the National Audit Office, confusion at local and national level still exists today, despite the Government’s well-meaning reforms, which signifies that deeper reforms or the unwinding of some of the 2010 reforms might be needed? Does he accept that, despite strong Government rebuttals back in February and March, the introduction of the banned substance phenylbutazone or bute into the food chain via horsemeat, albeit in trace elements, might have turned the situation from a food provenance issue into a food safety crisis? If he does not accept that, I ask him to read the National Audit Office report.

How does the Minister respond to criticisms that intelligence sharing, especially between food authorities and Departments in Ireland and the UK, has been weakened by the coalition’s machinery of government changes? Does he believe that reducing food testing by local authorities by a quarter, linked to cuts in funding and budgetary stresses, contributed to a lack of deeper intelligence from local sources that might have picked up the risks earlier? To turn to the point made by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton in his intervention, one of the things that the National Audit Office picked up on was the lack of deep intelligence down on the ground. Although it applauds a risk-based approach, deep intelligence would have flagged up these sorts of incidents at an early stage.

How does the Minister respond to fears that the closure of four public control laboratories in the past three years combined with a reduction in public analysts from 40 to 29 since 2010 raises the potential risk that we will be unable to respond to any future incident of this type?

My final question echoes a concern of the Select Committee and of the wider public. Where are the prosecutions, the fines, the penalties, the custodial sentences, and the naming and shaming of the guilty parties? I realise that the Minister will not be able to go into detail about the ongoing investigations, but we need to know whether we are talking about one or two bad apples or a fundamental problem with a rotten barrel. The Select Committee asks whether this is

“a complex network of traders and processors acting fraudulently to deceive consumers and retailers.”

The longer we wait for conclusions to the investigations, the more the feeling grows that people are escaping justice and that the networks that caused this criminality are also delaying that justice. We cannot expect the Minister to comment in detail on investigations that are under way, but I hope that he can at least inform us of some progress.

At the outset, I reiterated the justified criticism by the Select Committee of the flat-footed response by the FSA and the Government. Its call for stronger powers for the FSA were re-emphasised by the head of the National Audit Office only last week. He stated:

“The January 2013 horsemeat incident has revealed a gap between what citizens expect of the controls over the authenticity of their food, and the effectiveness of those controls on reality. The division of responsibilities for food safety and authenticity has created confusion.”

In conclusion, while Labour rightly demands—I know the Minister will demand this as well—that the food sector step up and take responsibility for its failures and commends the sector for the work it has done so far in recent months, it also demands the same response from our Government. The sins of the father do not have to be visited on the son. The new Under-Secretary of State can acknowledge that the 2010 FSA machinery of government changes were wrong-headed, that they played a contributory factor in retarding the early response to the crisis, that they are a risk factor, as the NAO says, in any future large-scale food adulteration or contamination episodes, and that he should now step up and act for the good of consumers, the food sector and farmers and for his own peace of mind. Last week, the head of the National Audit Office said:

“The Government needs to remove this confusion, and improve its understanding of potential food fraud and how intelligence is brought together and shared.”

I look forward to the Under-Secretary of State doing just that, beginning with his response. I wish him well in taking forward the Government’s action on this matter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I am happy to confirm my long-standing belief that we should transfer 15% from pillar one to pillar two. Our pillar two schemes do real good for the environment and 70% of our arable land uses those schemes. We also need to develop new schemes, as 30% of the new pillar one will depend on greening. We also have a guarantee, which we drove through the negotiations, that 30% of the rural development funds will be spent on the environment.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

The settlement for farmers across Britain is a tough one and they need to compete in a single market with all their continental competitors. Can we ensure that we implement our part of the single farm payment in this country in the most sympathetic way possible so that we can have effective and competitive food production?

[Mr Paterson]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that point. I have said on many occasions—I frequently repeated myself during the negotiations—that we must ensure that the way in which we impose CAP reform is simple and easy to understand. We will not make the mistakes of the previous Government, who caught us up in a horribly complex system that cost us €590 million in what the EU calls disallowances but in what I would call a fine.

Beef Cattle and Sheep (Carbon Footprint)

Neil Parish Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure, Mrs Brooke, to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon. I thank Mr Speaker for granting this timely debate on the report on the carbon footprint of the cattle and sheep sector by the all-party parliamentary group on beef and lamb.

I also thank my fellow committee members, especially the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) for attending the oral evidence sessions that we held as part of our four-month long inquiry and for their assistance in compiling the report.

The all-party group wanted to examine the methodologies currently used to calculate the carbon footprint of the sector in the UK and globally and how the data are used to inform the measures being taken to reduce emissions.

The report, which we launched in Parliament earlier this month, found that more robust scientific data and a standard model to measure carbon sequestration were needed to help the beef and lamb sector meet the twin challenges of sustainable food production and of reducing the environmental impact. It also found that the positive environmental impact of grazing livestock must be taken into account when trying to mitigate the sector’s carbon footprint.

Our inquiry found that a large number of models are used to assess the carbon footprint. Professor Nigel Scollan of Waitrose told the group at the evidence session that 16 methodologies for measuring the carbon footprint of livestock have been developed since 2007 alone. The PAS 2050 model, which was developed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Carbon Trust and the British Standards Institute, is the standard model used by DEFRA. However, in the evidence session, the independent Committee on Climate Change, which acts as an advisory body to the Government, stated that its accepted method for calculating production emissions is set out by an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

There is a clear lack of consensus or consistency, which raises two crucial points. First, there is a lack of consensus on how to measure livestock emissions. Secondly, any debate going on at an international level is not based on comparable data. For example, in England, the footprint of beef cattle, according to the PAS 2050 used by DEFRA was 12.65 kg carbon dioxide equivalent per kilogramme of live weight and for sheep it was 11.86 kg.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the research that has been carried out in Northern Ireland? The greenhouse gas implementation partnership seems to agree with him that there is still a body of research yet to be carried out. The Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute in Belfast, which is working with DEFRA and the department of agriculture and fisheries for Scotland, says as part of that research that the ongoing challenges of the inclement weather present a problem.

[Annette Brooke (in the Chair)]

Thank you for that. We will keep interventions a little shorter in future.

[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.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I applaud both the fact that we are having this debate and the work that my hon. Friend and his committee have done. Does he agree that, while this is a legitimate debate for us to have, our fundamental job in the House is to stand up and support our beef and sheep farmers?

[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.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene, and I do so only to ask him to agree that that issue is particularly relevant to Wales. There is almost no cereal growing in Wales that is worth talking about; in Wales, farming is almost wholly livestock farming. Livestock farming in Wales is so important that it completely dominates the agricultural scene there.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend refers to the amount of permanent pasture in Wales. Much of the land may well be too steep to be ploughed, and from an environmental point of view, we would not want to plough it. I do not wish to over-labour this point, but if we are not going to graze livestock on that pasture, what are we actually going to do to manage that land successfully? So livestock farming is not only important from an aesthetic point of view; it produces great meat and it does a great service for the landscape. So I very much agree with him. Parts of the west country and the north of England likewise have much permanent pasture.

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

May I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to something that he might find interesting, which is the reintroduction of the little-known Welsh White beef cattle up on the Plynlimon hills with the Wildlife Trusts? The reason that those cattle have been reintroduced in those areas, which are vital for holding carbon emissions in peat bogs, is that they trample the right sort of way—better than sheep—in that environment and they eat the right sort of vegetation to keep the biodiversity right as well. So the Welsh White cattle are doing a good job up there.

[Neil Parish]

The shadow Minister raises an interesting issue about not only carbon sequestration but the management of grassland, but not only Welsh White cattle are important in that regard; there is an argument that sheep do not do the same job on certain pasture land as suckler cows and beef cattle do. That is perhaps the subject for a debate for another time, but it is relevant to the fact that, if we are to have good-quality grassland, we need the right type of stock to graze it.

The inquiry found that no current methodology exists to include this factor in an assessment of carbon footprint, despite the fact the loss of hedgerows and pasture land, for example, would evidently impact on the amount of carbon removed from the air. Of course, more carbon would also be emitted if that pasture land were to be destroyed.

Grazing livestock, particularly on uplands, makes a valuable contribution to biodiversity and the preservation of ecosystems. For example, hedgerows provide wonderful habitats for many species that are vital for the diversity of fauna and flora. As numerous witnesses pointed out, it is important to bear that in mind when considering the overall environmental impact of agriculture. Quantifying the carbon value of biodiversity is incredibly difficult and is not something that life-cycle analysis takes into account. The evidence suggests that it will be a major challenge to find an agreed way of quantifying this benefit in the short or medium term. This exposes the weaknesses of simply looking at carbon footprint as a measure of environmental impact, and we urge the Minister to consider this point.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Like me, he was a farmer before first entering the House and as farmers we are used to getting the blame for a lot of things. There are certainly environmental consequences to certain farming practices, but does he share my disbelief that farmers are in the dock for—of all things—causing climate change and being responsible for it, given that we all know that the real problems with carbon come from the transport sector, energy generation and general industrialisation rather than from farming?

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend and I should probably both declare an interest; I should certainly do so as I am a farmer, and proud to be so. He is absolutely right, because what we have with methane gas from ruminants in particular is a very natural gas. It may come out perhaps too much for people’s liking, but it is very much there. We are taking lower-quality proteins—I had better be careful what I say—and developing them into high-quality meat. Therefore, the animal is doing a great deal of good, and I want to balance the amount of methane gas that the animals might produce compared with the amount of carbon that is kept in the land. I repeat the fact that if we do not keep that land as permanent pasture and plough it up, we will release an awful lot of carbon.

Farmers feel that the real basis of livestock farming is almost under threat. The whole idea of this report is perhaps to try to flag up in advance where the world might go to in a few years’ time, and that scenario is what I am particularly keen to avoid. People need to know the benefits of livestock farming.

I will move on to the next paragraph of the report. Food security is one of the most pressing issues for Governments across the world. By 2050, the global population is estimated to reach 9 billion, and food production will need to increase to meet growing demand. However, that has to be achieved using the existing agricultural land, while making more efficient use of water and mitigating the existing and future impact of farming on the environment.

The challenge is no less great on the home front, with the UK population set to increase by 10 million in the next quarter of a century alone and after the percentage of agricultural land in the UK fell from 39% in 1989 to some 25% in 2009. This means maximising the value of available land, by getting the best possible outcomes in terms of food production. British agricultural land comprises many different land types, and not all are suitable for the production of arable crops. This point was eloquently made by the food climate research network in its evidence to the all-party group:

“Not all land can support crop production and the question then arises—what should be done with this poorer quality, more marginal land? Traditionally the answer has been to graze ruminants which then provide us with meat, milk and other outputs. This represents a form of resource efficiency—the land is being used to produce food that would otherwise need to be produced elsewhere”

That is particularly important.

Almost 65% of UK farmland is only suitable for growing grass where sheep and cattle are grazed. We should be utilising this marginal land, which cannot be used for arable crops but can grow good grass and provide good biodiversity and environmental benefits. Beef cattle and sheep play a vital role in food production, because of their ability to turn non-human food into edible proteins and nutrients. Limiting the role of British livestock will reduce the efficiency with which we use our land for food production and will therefore reduce our ability to be self-sufficient.

These points are often neglected, or at least not adequately considered, by those who advocate meat-free diets. If, for argument’s sake, we were all to switch to a diet free of meat, much of our agricultural land would be unfarmed and we would see a considerable drop in the efficiency of our land to food conversion, in addition to the negative impacts on biodiversity, as outlined above.

When the developing world is eating more meat, and choosing to do so, there is a greater need to produce meat across the world. Therefore, Britain should do its fair share of meat production, and grazing both sheep and cattle on grassland is essential, in my view. Grazing cattle and sheep are often given disproportionate blame for carbon emissions from agriculture, and there is not enough recognition among some conservation groups of the role that livestock farming, particularly of grass-fed beef and lamb, plays in storing carbon, protecting biodiversity and utilising marginal land that cannot be used for arable crops.

I thank you for listening to this debate, Mrs Brooke, and open it to colleagues to join in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke.

It is probably masochism that brings me here to debate with a room full of farmers. People are well aware of where I come from on this issue, but I hope to convince them that I am speaking not from an emotive perspective, but on the basis of a significant number of reports from eminent experts in the field, which have convinced me of the environmental danger posed by the livestock sector.

In 2009, I introduced a debate in Parliament on the environmental impact of the livestock sector—as I recall, it was just me and the then Labour Minister, who was not particularly impressed. [Interruption.] Actually, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) may have been there.

It is a shame that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) is not here, because he introduced the Sustainable Livestock Bill in Parliament a few years ago as a private Member’s Bill.

[Neil Parish]

When the hon. Lady refers to the dangers of livestock production, is she differentiating between grass-fed livestock on permanent pasture, which is good for the landscape and biodiversity, and other forms of livestock? It is an interesting point, and I would like her to clarify it.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I will get on to that in a moment. It was one of the first points I was going to make.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South is by no means a vegetarian—he enjoys eating meat—but he made a persuasive case at that time for looking at the environmental impact of the livestock sector. It is a shame that he could not be here, because he perhaps has more credibility on these matters than I do in the eyes of the farmers present.

However, let me turn to my first point and respond to the intervention from the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). The problem with today’s debate is that it has, for understandable reasons, focused very much on farming in the UK. I understand that Members are keen to support the industry and the farmers in their constituencies, but that has led to a bit of a distortion, with a focus on grazing and grass-fed livestock, although I entirely agree that their environmental impact is less serious.

I had an interesting meeting with the Campaign to Protect Rural England on Friday and was told how in some areas of Wales the land previously used for sheep grazing was being used to grow blueberries, or given over to forestry, which were both more profitable. I accept that the areas at the top of the hill would not be suitable for that, but the CPRE made the case for alternative uses. Given the price of blueberries in the supermarket, perhaps people would gain from venturing into growing them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy]

I understand the nuanced argument that the hon. Gentleman is trying to make, but I still think that there is a compelling case, and I want to deal now with some reports.

It seemed to me that during the debate there was a herd of elephants in the room, which hon. Members were not mentioning. No reference was made to other very authoritative reports, which have said there is a serious issue to be addressed. In my 2009 debate, I cited the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation report of 2006, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, which makes compelling reading. It concluded:

“The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.”

I will not cite all the figures that I quoted in my debate, because people will be familiar with the fact that it takes 8 kg of grain to produce 1 kg of beef.

[Neil Parish]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

I understand. I am not trying to misrepresent the hon. Lady’s point of view. She opened her comments by saying that she was somewhat masochistic in expressing her view in a debate populated largely by people with agricultural interests.

If we can do anything to mitigate effects on agriculture and any other sphere, we should do so. If we can provide help with research and help the industry to help itself in reducing those effects, all the better. We want to put all those factors into the equation with the other undoubted benefits of extensive pasture and the societal changes in parts of the country where other forms of agriculture would be exceedingly difficult, or in areas where there is huge expertise, for example, in beef production. My hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) prayed in aid his Hereford cattle, and I thought there might be tension between those with Herefords and those with Aberdeen Angus cattle, but that did not arise. Let us join together in saying that this country is blessed with not only some of the best breeds of livestock, but some of the best livestock husbandry anywhere. I am proud of that, and it makes my job that much easier.

My final point is about industry development and supplementary requirements, and responds in part to the report of my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton’s all-party group. Getting development of supplementary requirements under PAS 2050 and product rules under the greenhouse gas protocol product standard will help to bring consistency to carbon footprinting in the beef and sheep sector. EBLEX has taken the lead, and is a very effective levy-funded organisation. It is working on a UK-wide basis, which is relevant to some of the arguments about levy funding in the red meat sector, to produce the best possible advice and support for all producers throughout the United Kingdom, and I support it in that.

My hon. Friend and his all-party group have made some important points about the lack of consistency and the interpretation of the information we have to date. We accept that there is a lack of consistency. We want to improve that and to make the information as useful as possible because that will help the industry to move in the right direction in reducing as far as possible the emissions from agriculture and ensuring that we contribute as much as we can to our overall reduction in greenhouse gas. I hope we all support that. It is a principal feature of Government policy.

[Neil Parish]

I thank the Minister for his response. I want to put on the record the benefits of grass-fed beef and sheep production, and the fact that the amount of carbon stored in the soil balances the methane gas that the animals release. That is the particular point that I wanted the report to emphasise.

[Mr Heath]

I am glad that I gave way to my hon. Friend to make that final comment without running foul of the procedural rules. This debate has been extremely useful and interesting. The argument will continue to engage us, but we have made a valuable contribution today.

Dog Control and Welfare

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I will try to ensure that my contribution is less than 15 minutes.

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling). I sympathise with her constituents who have lost their lives, as I think we all do. I also agree with her about the need for education in our schools. It is not only the children who may not have pets in their homes who need education; children in homes where, unfortunately, animals are being treated cruelly also need to be shown the right way to rear and look after animals. There is a lot that can be done in our schools, so I welcome the hon. Lady’s comments.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), the Chair of the Select Committee, for bringing this opportune debate to the Chamber. We on the Select Committee have done a lot of work on the matter, and it is good to have both the Minister and the shadow Minister here this afternoon.

I welcome the microchipping proposal because it means all dogs will be microchipped; it will also help people whose dogs have strayed. Of course, microchipping will only be as good as the database that is put in place. If people go to Blue Cross or Battersea Dogs Home, they will find that of the dogs that come in with microchips, which is probably only 30% or 40% of the total, only 30%—10% or 15% of the total—can be traced back to their owners; the microchips are often not up to date. I am sure the Government will bear that in mind.

We must ensure that the original owner is responsible for the microchip and, if they sell the dog, for ensuring that the microchip is up to date so that the dog can be properly traced. People who sell their car have to ensure that they know exactly where the car is going because otherwise if someone is later done for speeding, the original owner will receive a notice through the post stating that they were driving the car when they were not. I suggest, therefore, that if the previous owner of a dog receives a fine or a summons to court, they are responsible for it. That would concentrate people’s minds. People who sell their dog would then ensure that they knew where the dog was going.

We have talked this afternoon about the need to be careful that, as with dog licences, microchips are not just for the law abiding, which is an issue I have raised before. The last thing someone who is breeding a dog to be dangerous or to be a weapon wants is for that dog to be traced back to them. There are people out there who will wilfully ensure, as far as practicable, that their dog is not microchipped, or if the dog is microchipped, that it is not linked with them. That is fundamental.

When police and council dog wardens come across people who are, say, beating their dogs in the park to train them to be vicious, that is the moment to take in and microchip the dogs, and probably take them away from their owner. At the very least, the dogs should be linked with the owner so that the owner can be held responsible for what the dog does thereafter. Again, I agree with the hon. Member for Bolton West that it is not necessarily the dog that is at fault; it is about the owner who has trained the dog to be vicious. We have to be absolutely clear about that.

That brings me neatly to my next point. It is right that we extend the legislation to deal with people who have in their home dangerous dogs that bite postmen or social workers. In doing so, however, we must be aware that if the dog is protecting the property and someone goes in to trespass or burgle, the dog will take some sort of action against that person. In that case, I do not see why any individual should be prosecuted as a result. That will be the difficult balance in the legislation. Often, when postmen or social workers going into people’s houses are bitten, it is not the first time it has happened. The dogs are sometimes well known for being vicious, and we need to take action on those types of dogs and owners. That is absolutely clear.

Furthermore, while breed-specific legislation is okay up to a point, we now have people bringing dogs into the country and breeding them to be dangerous, so we have to be clear that our concern is the action of the dog and not necessarily the breed of the dog. Leaving the breed-specific legislation as it is does not help when dogs from all over the world are being brought in to breed a more vicious breed of dog. People who do that are outside the law and they do not want to be found; we need to make sure of them, so that we can pin their dogs back to the individual.

[Julie Hilling]

Local authorities spend about £57 million a year on kennelling costs, when dogs are thought to be or might be of a dangerous breed, but with two effects. First, kennelling costs a great deal of money and, secondly, the dog suffers more trauma when kept in kennels while we work out what we should do with the animal. I absolutely agree that it is deed, not breed, that is more important.

[Neil Parish]

The Blue Cross hospital here in London might have dogs of a breed that is considered vicious, yet an individual dog need not be vicious. Once such a dog is taken into care, there is a death warrant on it, irrespective of whether the dog deserves it. We could go round such conundrums all day, but we should rehouse dogs if possible. Sometimes dogs are taken into care just because people cannot cope with them—they are not training the dogs to be vicious; they simply cannot cope with them any longer. Dogs of a good temperament, but of a breed that might be considered more dangerous, are often the ones that have to be put down, and I do not agree with that.

Moving beyond dangerous dogs as such, an issue at the top end of dog breeding is that many are bred to be too pure. Pugs might be bred so they cannot breathe properly, because that is how masters and breed judges see the case; Alsatians are bred with bad hips, because sometimes that is how the pedigree breeders think that breed should be. Linking with the microchip measures and, clearly, back to the breeding, therefore, the Government need to be absolutely certain that dogs are bred to be not only pure, as in that instance, but healthy. That might be going beyond the subject of today’s debate, but the Kennel Club and others are working hard on the issue, and we need to do more. If some pedigree dogs are being bred from a gene pool that is too small, we need to introduce other breeds to ensure a proper gene pool so that they can breed properly—so that they have good hips, for example.

On puppy farming, it is right that for more than two litters the farms or breeders should be registered. DEFRA is working on that; people need to be clear where dogs come from—through puppy contracts, such as those used by the British Veterinary Association—what the dog’s parentage is and where its mother is. If possible, people should see the puppy with the mother, so that they know exactly what they are buying; they should not buy something advertised over the internet or out of the back of a white van, because they have no link to the mother. Such puppies could have been taken from their mother far too young and they could be traumatised and may also be suffering from many diseases. When something happens to a puppy because it has many illnesses, the children of the family it was brought into might be traumatised as well. Again, proper linking to the original breeder through the puppy’s microchip will make all the difference, because people will find it much more difficult to bring puppies in and pass them off as bred somewhere else, which is often the case.

This afternoon, we have a huge wish list, yet as all of us recognise, Ministers and shadow Ministers included, we can make as many laws as we like, but we also have to enforce them. The laws have to be enforceable, and that is what we are keen to see. Resources in councils and the Government are limited at the moment, so we need to concentrate on getting the system—the microchipping —right, with a link to the owner so that the police or dog wardens can take action quickly and effectively. Ensuring that we do not have to kennel dogs for so long will also reduce costs. A lot of good can be done through the Bill.

I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton: the vast majority of dog owners in this country are good and responsible. We must ensure that we go after those who are not. We must also act against dogs that attack not only people but a dog guiding a blind person—that has to be just as bad as an attack on a person. It is terrifying enough to have a dog of one’s own attacked by another dog, but imagine people walking down a road unable even to see the other dog approaching before it attacks their guide dog. That must be absolutely terrifying, and all those things should be taken into consideration.

Finally, if horrendous crimes have been committed by dogs, and if the owners have trained the dogs to carry out such acts, we must ensure that the book is thrown at those people, and that they receive sentences commensurate with their crime. Sometimes, of course, a dog that is not normally dangerous goes out of control, and that has to be looked at slightly more leniently. The situation now is that we must take action against those who are out to perpetrate crime. Once again, I thank my hon. Friend for the debate, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.