Environment and Climate Change

Neil Parish Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Makes sense to me.

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

As we produce a new agriculture and environment policy, we can plant a lot of trees along banks to mitigate flooding while improving our environment and having great food at the same time. I very much welcome the policies that the Secretary of State is bringing forward.

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have to recognise the vital role that farmers and growers play—not just in providing us with food, but in ensuring that our countryside is beautiful and that we are fighting climate change. I particularly thank the leader of the National Farmers Union, Minette Batters, who has committed the NFU to having net zero agriculture by 2040. She is a fantastic champion not only for British food, but for our environment.

World Health: 25-Year Environment Plan

Neil Parish Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Westminster Hall

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

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall. Trees are not only good for capturing carbon and converting it to oxygen and generally good for the landscape; by planting them on banks, and using them as flood mitigation systems, they can do good for air quality and reduce the chances of flooding in the future.

[Derek Thomas]

That is all part of the agenda on climate change and caring for our environment, so that we can all enjoy it. I am glad that schoolchildren who care about our planet can take action by planting trees and clearing our beaches and seas of the plastics that threaten to suffocate the health of our oceans.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley]

We look forward to bringing it back to the House as soon as parliamentary time allows.

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

Yes, five-year sentencing for animal cruelty must be brought in as soon as possible, but my question is about puppies being smuggled in from abroad. Under EU legislation, five puppies can be brought in legally. Very often, fraudulent veterinary certificates are issued, puppies come in very young and with no socialisation, and it is criminal gangs that profit. When we leave the European Union, can we cut the number of puppies that can come in legally from five to two?

[David Rutley]

I thank the Chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for raising that point, as he has done several times in the Committee. I can assure him that once we leave, we will be able to look at the number of puppies that can be brought in.

Modern Farming and the Environment

Neil Parish Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Colin Clark) for securing this excellent debate. It is also a great pleasure to have here our new Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), a good Yorkshire farmer. I also pay tribute to our previous Agriculture Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), for his five years’ great service to agriculture and the environment.

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate because British agriculture is a great success story, not only for production but for the environment, and we all need to work together for a great new policy. I look forward to working with our new Minister to deliver proper, good food production along with securing the environment. We have a poultry and pig industry that has reduced the amount of antibiotics used in production. We are doing great things for the environment. We have the potential for gene editing with crops in future. We also have the potential to go down the route of a blight-resistant potato. We have to use all the tools to make sure that we have a better environment, but also greater production.

The point has been made this afternoon that if we are not careful and do not produce food here under good environmental and welfare standards, we will import it from across the world under lower standards. In Brazil they are driving cattle towards the rainforest, which they are knocking down, and they are ploughing up the savannah to grow crops such as sugar beet and soya. In the end, that is where production will come from. We must link it all together.

A third of the forests are in our farms, with our copses. We have the Blackdown Hills, which I share with my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow). Of course, they are even better when they get to the county of Devon. It is absolutely certain that we have got great farming, which is where so much of our wildlife and biodiversity is. We can do better, but we are doing extremely well. I know that I do not have to tell the Minister that the great landscape that we have across this country is not there because God provided it; it is there because it is farmed, looked after and managed. Therefore, we are the friends of the earth. Farmers do not have to prove that. We have to go out there and make sure we can produce good food.

Grassland holds carbon and we can capture more. My hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) made the point that as we increase the amount of organic matter in the soil, it can hold more water, as well as carbon. We have an excellent story to tell. The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) pointed out the amendments that have been tabled to the Agriculture Bill, on the long-term funding of agriculture and the environment, and on making sure that imported food meets our high standards. The Secretary of State wants higher welfare standards, which is great, but let us not import food that does not meet those standards. As to animal welfare, let us not export to conditions across the world that are nowhere near as good. We have every possibility of doing far greater work in the future, not only with gene editing but with smart spraying, robotic spraying and even electrocuting weeds. All sorts of improvements are possible to reduce the use of chemicals, and achieve good production. I want us to produce good food to high standards, with less chemicals, and I believe we can do it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Goodwill]

At the current time, as a member state of the European Union, we must comply with its legislation. However, whatever decisions we make in the future must be based on the best available scientific evidence.

[Sir Gary Streeter in the Chair]

My hon. Friend the Member for Gordon raised the question of whether food is a public good. Food is a commercial good, and the prime purpose of British agriculture is to produce good food, fibre and fuel. Recognising that those products are integral to UK agriculture should be front and centre in all our policies. He also mentioned the displacement of CO₂. I have previously been involved with that topic as a Member of the European Parliament, when energy-intensive industries such as the metallurgical industry were being exported to countries with environmental standards that were not as good as ours.

I agreed with the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) more than I had thought I would when she got to her feet. Having served on the Environmental Audit Committee with her, I know that her views are to be taken seriously. Organic farming has a part to play. Under our new agricultural regime, we may look at how we can encourage farmers to innovate, and organic farming is one of those innovations. However, organic production should be demand-led, because we do not want to create surpluses of organic food that cause a collapse in the market and make the farms that produce such food un-economic.

The hon. Lady also talked about wildflower margins. As part of a mid-tier scheme on my farm, we are planting those margins, which are certainly a public good. The Government are in the process of designing an environmental land management system to ensure that farmers are rewarded for the environmental benefits they deliver, such as creating habitats for wildlife. Decisions about how public goods such as biodiversity, clean air and water are delivered will be in the hands of farmers and land managers, who may choose, for example, to lower their pesticide use through integrated pesticide management. We will pay for the public benefits that they deliver.

A number of Members, including the hon. Member for Bristol East, talked about improving soil. The question of how we increase the organic matter in soil is important. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon talked about minimum tillage, and the chemicals needed to ensure that we can engage in minimum tillage contribute to the amount of carbon we can store in our soils. Mixed farming, including livestock production, is particularly important, as manures are a vital source of plant nutrients and improve the structure and heart of our soils. That means keeping livestock, and ruminants in particular, as they are the only way in which we can utilise some of our upland soil and areas that are not suitable for intensive cereal or crop production as upland pastures.

My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) is a champion of farmers and the rural environment, and she is right that soil is a public good. Some 300 million tonnes of carbon are stored in our upland peat areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) chairs the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, to which I have given evidence before, but I look forward to appearing before him again. My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant) represents a great farming area. When I was studying agriculture at university, we went on a field trip to Ayrshire, and I am very jealous of its mild climate, brought to it by the gulf stream. It is clear that food production and the delivery of environmental objectives are not mutually exclusive; there is a synergism between those two goals, and we need to deliver them in parallel.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid) asked whether the pursuit of trade deals around the world will jeopardise our high standards, as did the Labour Front-Bench representative, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard). I am clear that we will not lower our standards. Indeed, our very high standards and high-quality produce give those countries with which we engage in trade deals a lot to worry about. We will have a great opportunity to market that produce around the world, as is already the case for good products such as Scotch whisky.

[Neil Parish]

I am delighted to hear the new Minister’s comments. Does he support the amendments to the Agriculture Bill that would maintain high standards for imported food, so that we do not import lower standard food through future trade deals?

[Mr Goodwill]

I hear what my hon. Friend says, and I will be looking at those amendments line by line—who knows, there may even be Government amendments tabled that will achieve many of those objectives. I was a member of that Bill Committee, so hon. Members can look at what I said at the time. I will aim to be consistent with what I said.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) talked about the intra-UK allocation of domestic support. On 16 October 2018, the Government announced a review of intra-UK allocation of domestic farm support funding that will run until the end of this Parliament, which will be in 2022—I hope. The review aims to ensure that all parts of the UK are treated fairly, and that individual circumstances are taken into account. Lord Bew will chair the review, supported by a panel drawn from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The review will look into intra-UK farm support allocations between 2020 and the end of this Parliament, in line with our manifesto commitment.

I thank the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport for welcoming me, and I welcome him in return. He actually talked a lot of sense—indeed, the points he made were an oasis of sanity within Labour policy. I am confident that we can work together constructively to deliver a successful Brexit. If he really wants to help me with this, the first thing he can do is join me in the Lobby tonight, to ensure that we deliver a successful Brexit. The hon. Gentleman also mentioned forestry, and I look forward to working with Sir William Worsley, who has been appointed as the Government’s forestry champion. He is one of my near neighbours in North Yorkshire, so I have visited him there and know that he has an amazing tale to tell.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon for securing the debate, and all those present for their contributions. The UK is a global leader in environmental management and scientific breakthroughs, including earth observations, sensors, big data, artificial intelligence and robotics. The agriculture sector can be transformed when we apply those strengths alongside our excellent reputation for producing food. The Government are committed to delivering a modern, tech-savvy and sustainable farming sector in England, with the protection of the environment at its core. The Agriculture Bill is paving the way for that shift, and I look forward to sharing further information and engaging with colleagues about our future policies in due course.

Draft Waste (Miscellaneous Amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Waste (Miscellaneous Amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Austin. The need for the statutory instrument arises as the UK leaves the European Union, as provided for by the result of the 2016 referendum and as subsequently agreed by Parliament. In line with the European Union (Withdrawal Act) 2018, the regulations simply make technical legal amendments to maintain the effectiveness and continuity of UK legislation that would otherwise be left partially inoperable, so that following our exit from the EU, the law will continue to function as it does today. I assure the Committee that the adjustments represent no change in policy and will have no impact on businesses or the public.

The matters under consideration are devolved, but the four Administrations have agreed to make most of the necessary changes through the statutory instrument, so its territorial extent and application is the United Kingdom. That said, the following amendments do not cover the whole United Kingdom.

First, in part 2, the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which is amended by regulations 2 and 5, does not extend or apply to Northern Ireland. Secondly, Council decision 2003/33/EC, which is amended by regulation 15, does not form part of retained EU law in relation to Scotland, as the requirements of that decision have previously been implemented directly in Scottish domestic legislation. Thirdly, of the new reporting requirements that replace the existing reporting requirements to the Commission, which I will cover later in my speech, a particular example refers to England only, as the devolved Administrations did not want that duty to apply to them in the instrument. We have worked with the devolved Administrations during the drafting of the instrument. They have all given their consent, as has the Scottish Parliament.

The instrument covers the waste management areas of waste batteries and accumulators, end-of-waste criteria, packaging waste, end-of-life vehicle destruction certification, landfill acceptance criteria, the classification of hazardous waste, the management of waste from extractive industries, and calculation methods for verifying compliance with recycling targets under article 11.2 of the waste framework directive.

To ensure operability, the instrument will make amendments to three waste-related Acts of Parliament and 14 related EU regulations and decisions. More broadly, as has often happened with such statutory instruments, a large number of the changes are due to amending references to the European Union, EU institutions and EU administrative processes to make them refer to their domestic equivalents in the UK, and to updating legal references to refer to relevant domestic legislation.

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

I thank the Minister for giving way and assure her that I will not keep her long. The end-of-life vehicles directive puts a sum of money in place to dispose of vehicles. Naturally, the statutory instrument only passes the legislation from European to British law, but further down the road, I would like the Minister to consider the cost of scrapping vehicles. Perhaps electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles could have a lesser charge, which would be yet another way to encourage people to use electric vehicles so that we improve our air quality in the long run.

[Dr Coffey]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting policy point, but he will recognise that the purpose of the instrument is not to generate new policy at this stage. That will be a matter for a future separate debate. I fully understand where he is coming from—he mentioned the matter in the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee yesterday—but to keep the debate relevant to the statutory instrument, I suggest we talk about it another time.

[Neil Parish]

I understand.

[Dr Coffey]

A significant part of the instrument addresses the way in which references to EU directives will be applied after exit day. I now turn to the detail of the changes that are being made through the instrument.

In part 2, regulations 2 and 3 effectively bring references to the waste framework directive up to date with respect to part II of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Waste and Emissions Trading Act 2003. That is enabled by section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972. Part 2 of the draft regulations therefore brings our existing regulations up to date with the correct references.

Part 3 comprises the substantial changes needed to make the retained law operable, with respect to primary legislation, after exit from the EU. That is the element directly relevant to the withdrawal Act. Regulation 4 considers the Control of Pollution (Amendment) Act 1989, which contains a specific power for the Secretary of State to exempt—by secondary legislation—a waste carrier operating in the UK from the need to be UK registered, based solely on meeting the legal requirements in other EU member states. That power has never been used and will be redundant upon exit so we are revoking it, but the existing general power to exempt registering when prescribed conditions are met will remain. I emphasise that all carriers operating in the UK will still need to meet the requirements set by UK competent authorities.

Regulation 5 inserts new section 75A into the Environmental Protection Act. The new section clarifies how the waste framework directive will be applied after exit to maintain the existing effect and operation of the law.

Regulation 6 contains two strands of amendments to the Waste and Emissions Trading Act 2003. Regulation 6(2) amends section 1 of that Act. It omits subsection (2), which referred to landfill targets contained in article 5.2 of the landfill directive, as those targets are already set out in domestic legislation. Subsection (4) is also amended to require the Secretary of State to consult the appropriate devolved Administration for each part of the UK before setting any new landfill targets or amending existing ones. That fully respects the devolution agreements as waste is a devolved matter. A similar change is made by regulation 6(3) to the secondary legislation-making power in section 23 of the 2003 Act. Regulation 6(4) amends section 37 of that Act, which defines waste for the purpose of the Act, and inserts new section 37A to provide modifications to clarify the way that the waste framework directive will be applied after exit, in order to maintain the existing effect and operation of the law.

Part 4 of the instrument makes amendments to and revocations of retained direct EU legislation. The lawyers have drafted the regulations by number in order of year, but I will speak to groups of new regulations that refer to specific waste-related subject areas. Chapter 1 of part 4 makes amendments to EU regulations. Regulations 8 and 10 of the instrument are about batteries. They make amendments to Commission regulation 1103/2010, which relates to capacity labelling of batteries, and to Commission regulation 493/2012 on the calculation of recycling efficiencies of the recycling processes of waste batteries and accumulators.

The amendments include replacing references to “Member States” with “The Secretary of State”, and defining “appropriate agency”, which would be the environmental regulators in England, Scotland and Wales, and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland. The amendments also insert modifications that clarify the way that the various EU directives referenced in those EU regulations will be applied after exit in order to maintain the existing effect and operation of the law.

Regulations 9, 11 and 12 cover waste criteria and make amendments to three EU regulations made under article 6.1 of the waste framework directive. Those three EU regulations provide criteria for determining when certain types of scrap metal, glass cullet and copper scrap cease to be waste. The required processes for businesses to achieve end of waste will not change as a result of the instrument. The assessment of end-of-waste status and the guidance provided by regulatory agencies will still apply as before.

The principal amendments made to those EU regulations insert modifications to the way that references to EU directives in those regulations are to be applied on and after exit day. For example, references to “Member States” are to be read as references to the “appropriate authority”, “competent authority” or “local authority”, which was responsible for the UK’s compliance with that obligation or was able to exercise that discretion before exit day. To be clear, those are not new burdens; they merely maintain the status quo about who does what currently.

In addition, the amendments account for the fact that environmental verification under the eco-management and audit scheme—known as EMAS—will no longer apply in the United Kingdom. Hon. Members who have regularly attended such Delegated Legislation Committees will know that the amendments relating to that scheme have already been passed by both Houses.

Chapter 2 covers EU decisions. Regulation 13 amends Commission decision 2000/532/EC, which contains a list of waste classifications for hazardous and non-hazardous waste. The amendments introduce modifications to clarify the way that various EU directives will be applied to maintain the existing effect and operation of the law.

Regulations 14 and 16 make amendments to decisions made under directive 94/62/EC on packaging and packaging waste relating to derogations for glass packaging and plastic crates and pallets. References to “Member States” will be replaced by the “Secretary of State”, references to “Community” will be replaced by the “United Kingdom”, and appropriate agencies defined as the regulator of each nation and DAERA in Northern Ireland. They also introduce modifications that clarify the way in which EU directives referenced in the legislation will be read.

Regulations 15 and 17 to 20 amend various decisions made under directives 1999/31/EC and 2006/21/EC relating to the landfilling of waste and extractive waste respectively. These amendments include replacing references to “Member States” with “The Secretary of State”, and references to “Community” with “the United Kingdom”, and provide certainty on definitions and defining the appropriate agency. Two amendments convert requirements to report information to the European Commission into a statutory duty to publish the same information reports. As before, they introduce modifications that clarify the way in which EU directives referenced in the legislation will be applied.

Regulation 21 relates to Commission decision 2011/753/EU on establishing rules and calculation methods for verifying compliance with a target set in the waste framework directive. Regulation 21(7) applies to England only. This is where we have amended article 5 of the decision so that it now requires the Secretary of State to publish the progress report on whether the current target to recycle 50% of household waste by 2020, set by article 11.2 of the waste framework directive, has been met in respect of England. The progress report must be published before 1 January 2022. The devolved Administrations did not want this duty to apply to them in this instrument.

In chapter 3 of part 4 and the schedule, the instrument revokes some directly applicable EU legislation on waste. Some of this legislation has been revoked because it is redundant in a domestic context, for example Commission decisions that set the format of questionnaires and data reports that EU member states complete and return to the Commission in relation to the implementation of EU directives.

Other pieces of the directly applicable EU legislation are being revoked because their requirements are already embedded in domestic legislation. For example, Commission decision 2003/138/EC covers material and component coding standards for end-of-life vehicles; and Commission decision 2002/151/EC relates to minimum standards for the certificate of destruction for those vehicles. In both cases, the requirements of those decisions are already set out fully in the End-of-Life Vehicles Regulations 2003.

This statutory instrument is long and technical, but as I said at the start, it does not change policy. It simply makes the rules that we have today applicable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley]

A very active dialogue is going on to determine the right vehicle, involving the usual channels within the House; those conversations have taken place.

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

Can the Government get out of crawler gear and get into first or second, because we have to bring about this five-year sentencing? At the moment, someone who pleads guilty to a horrendous crime of animal cruelty gets a maximum of four months, because they get an automatic 30% reduction. It is crazy that huge amounts of animal welfare abuse happens and we have such short sentences. So please get on with it.

[David Rutley]

We will get on with it. We take animal welfare seriously; we have introduced a third-party ban on sales of puppies and kittens, and we are working on this very actively.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Coffey]

The hon. Lady will be aware that SSSIs have an exceptionally high protection status under the national planning policy framework, which was updated last year. It is really important that these matters are considered carefully and that such development is avoided, but it will come down to a local decision for the local planning authority.

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

The Minister has talked about amendments to the Agriculture Bill. Will he and the Secretary of State really look at those amendments, and especially those that maintain high standards for imported foods, so that we do not put our own farmers out of business?

[George Eustice]

I can reassure my hon. Friend that I have already looked closely at some of the interesting amendments he has tabled.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bridget Phillipson]

The Electoral Commission has called for imprints to follow for digital material as they would for printed material. I am sure that officials from the commission will be happy to discuss the matter further with the hon. Gentleman, and we welcome any steps that he can take to urge the Government to take further action in that area.

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

Our electoral integrity is so important: when people vote we must ensure that they are exactly who they say they are. Since 2003 Northern Ireland has had photographic identification. What does the Electoral Commission feel about strengthening the situation as regards voter integrity?

[Bridget Phillipson]

The commission completed independent evaluation of the May 2018 voter ID pilot trials, and it published details on that analysis and the background data in July 2018. It found that the trials worked well, but it highlighted the need for more evidence in that area. As 3.5 million electors may not have the type of identification required, the commission continues to recommend that electors should be able to apply for a voter card free of charge, as is the case in Northern Ireland.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

We have already agreed targets that are now in law regarding PM₁₀ and PM_2.5, and we are well below those targets. We will continue to work on this. I know that the House is eager to see the outcome of the clean air strategy, which I expect to be published shortly. I can assure the hon. Lady that this issue is close to my heart, especially the question of particulate matter, because I am very conscious of the impact that it can have. However, we need to be careful when we read some of the reports, because there is often a correlation link but not necessarily a causal link, which means that we still need to do research on these matters. I am pleased that the Department of Health and Social Care, through Public Health England, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are undertaking that research.

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

4. What steps he is taking to ensure that agricultural products produced to lower environmental and animal welfare standards than UK products will not be included in any future trade agreements.

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

Our current high standards, including on import requirements, will apply when we leave the EU. Some of them, such as the ban on the use of growth-promoting hormones, are already in domestic legislation. Others, such as the ban on chlorine washing of poultry, will be brought on to our statute book through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Countries seeking access to our markets in future will have to abide by our standards.

[Neil Parish]

Ministers are naturally keen to raise welfare standards in this country, and to reduce the use of antibiotics and produce greater and better food than we already have, but if we are undermined by imports, that will put farmers out of business and reduce global animal welfare. Will Ministers therefore accept the amendment that the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has tabled to ensure that imports are not allowed into this country if they do not meet our standards of production?

[George Eustice]

As my hon. Friend will be aware, we had a good discussion on these matters in the Bill Committee, and I look forward to discussing his amendment on Report. Our view is that the types of measure that he has outlined would probably not be right, because it is sometimes possible to recognise equivalence, and our standards do not have to be identical in drafting regulations. However, there are a number of other approaches that some countries take, including scrutiny and oversight roles for Parliaments as trade deals are discussed.

Fisheries Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 21st November 2018 Commons Chamber

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

It is a great pleasure to speak in this fishing debate, and I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s speech. On this grey November day in this House, where we seem to have little to cheer us up at the moment, fishing is one of the things that we can cheer ourselves up with, because we now have the opportunity to get more fish, for our fishermen and under-10 metre fleet to have more quota, and for anglers to access more fish, which is another great economic opportunity. There will also be more fish for our processors to process.

The whole thing about bringing back control of our fishing is that we can actually put right the wrongs that happened about 40 years ago. There is no doubt—those of us in and around coastal constituencies know this full well—that if anybody suffered when we went into the then Common Market, it was our fishing industry. As we consider the Fisheries Bill, let us make sure that we right those wrongs and get our stocks back, and ensure that those who fish in our waters—if we allow them to do so—fish under our rules and regulations. Let us ensure that we have a sustainable fishing policy.

I very much welcome the fact that the fisheries White Paper says:

“Fisheries will be a separate strand of our future relationship with the EU.”

For far too long our fisheries have been controlled by the EU under the CFP, and for too long our fishermen have been managed as a single EU exclusive economic zone. The Bill gives us the framework to take control of our waters, to come out of the CFP and to become an independent coastal state. The UK alone will be responsible for our exclusive economic zone of some 200 miles or the median line. Now we need to make sure that the Bill works. However, it can be improved, and I welcome the fact that the Labour party is taking a positive view on the Bill, because it always helps when there is not too much of a great political divide across the House.

It is not clear to me what practical arrangements the Government have made for enforcement when foreign fishing boats have access to our waters, because there is no doubt—under a no-deal Brexit, or any other Brexit that we achieve—that we will need to ensure that we have control of our waters. We also have to ensure that the cameras and systems on the boats that monitor fishing are working and not being switched off. Those systems not only cover quantities of fish and who is fishing, but work very well as far as discards are concerned. If ever there was a benefit of coming out of the CFP, is it with regard to discards. Not only is it a huge waste of resource to throw back into the sea good, healthy fish, most of which will die and probably putrefy the sea bed, but it is important that we land all the fish that are caught, as that means that we can have a proper monitor of what is in the sea and what is being caught so that we know that the science is absolutely right. Those of us who have been involved in fishing for many years, as many Members have, will find that while the scientists say one thing, the fishermen will tell us that they could walk to America on the back of cod because there are so many in the sea. There may be a slight exaggeration, but I think that Members get the gist of my argument.

[Mr Carmichael]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. The root of the disjunction between science and the industry is the fact that the advice that is given is often based on data that are very old—almost two years old by the time they are used for decision making. Does he agree that in this brave new world of fisheries management, one of our first priorities ought to be the quick and dirty use of the data that are being harvested by the scientists?

[Neil Parish]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention—he is right. I think that DEFRA is working much more with fishermen, and they will need to work more closely to ensure that the collection of that information happens more quickly. We also need to learn from the monitoring of how fish are caught and what is happening on the fishing boats, because all this is important. There needs to be trust between the fishermen and DEFRA officials, because that is sometimes lacking. There is a great deal that can be positive. I know that the Secretary of State and our Fisheries Minister are really driving towards that, and I think we can do it.

[Richard Drax]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. The point that is often ignored in fishing debates is that fish are born in one place, and then swim and live in another.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes a really good point. Fish will move, perhaps because of water temperature or where the food is. Also, of course, they do not always swim together. Cod swim together and haddock swim together, so we can go out and make sure that we catch only one species of fish, but other types of fish swim separately, and we will often catch many species. That is especially the case in the south-west waters, where we are very much a mixed fishery, and that is why the discards are so important. We do not want the fishermen to target particular species, but we want them to be able to catch fish and land it all. The challenge is going to be making sure that we recompense fishermen for delivering fish that they did not have the quota to catch, but do not stimulate them into catching fish that they perhaps should not be catching.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

Does my hon. Friend welcome the study by one of the northern universities and CEFAS to look at zonal attachment as a way of assessing fish stocks within the United Kingdom 200 miles from the median line limit?

[Neil Parish]

As always, my hon. Friend speaks great sense on fishing, and so she should, given her knowledge of it. Zonal attachment is an interesting way of looking at this. When we are managing our own waters, we should be able to manage that much more quickly, so that an area that can be fished can be opened up, or if an area needs to be closed down, for reasons of the environment or fish breeding, we can do so much more quickly.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston]

Further to the point about zonal attachment, does my hon. Friend agree with Brixham fishermen that sprats would be an ideal kind of species to look at, because 90% of them are caught within the 12-mile limit but we have only 52% of the total allowable catch? Does he agree that that would be a much more sensible way to proceed?

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. By moving to a different system, we perhaps remove ourselves from some of the existing quota restrictions. Because those are historical, and because we did not necessarily get a good deal—far from it—when we went into the common fisheries policy, we have the opportunity to do this.

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

rose—

[Neil Parish]

I think I am going to use up most of my time at this rate, but I give way.

[Andrew Bowie]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is being very generous with his time. He may or may not be aware that in 2015 Conservative MEPs tried to force the European Union to allow individual member states to use European fisheries funding to help fishing communities to implement the discard ban on the quayside. As we are now coming out of the CFP, will he join me in urging DEFRA and the devolved authorities to use the funding that they have to help to implement these new regulations on the quayside, because we are leaving it up to individual fishermen and organisations to do a lot of the work themselves, and some are working to very tight budgets?

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. This is about how we help these fishermen. Can a certain amount of help be given regarding the fuel needed to bring back the fish? What is the value of the fish when it is brought in? Is it going to be sold on the open market, and do we then put a super-levy on it so that bringing it back is not too attractive? These are some of the issues that I am sure that our Fisheries Minister and Secretary of State will deal with in due course, if not necessarily in the Bill.

[Mr John Hayes]

My hon. Friend is displaying that his grasp of fisheries is at least as great as his grasp of farming. As he develops this thesis, which is essentially about replacing discards and quotas with closed areas and other measures to preserve fish stocks, will he say a word about industrial fishing? While it is true that fishermen should be able to keep what they catch, industrial fishing sweeps the ocean floor, and the CFP has been singularly ineffective at dealing with its environmental consequences.

[Neil Parish]

My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point. We were talking earlier about pulse fishing, which is used in particular by the Dutch. That causes huge damage to not only the seabed but, potentially, fish stocks. I often think that going out to fish should be much more a question of licking a finger to see which way the wind is blowing, but it does not work like that anymore. We use huge sonar equipment so that we know exactly where the fish are, and we can hoover them up in massive amounts. As we fish, we therefore have to be careful that we keep the stocks sustainable. I always say that the difference between fishing and farming is that with farming, we can at least replace the stock if we want to, but fish are a wild stock and must be bred in the sea, so we cannot take out too many fish if we want to keep the stock sustainable. Those are very good points.

You probably do not want me to go on for too much longer, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will do my level best to move on quickly. We need more clarity in the Bill about the practical arrangements, which we have talked about a lot, and I look forward to seeing more detail. In particular, I am concerned that fisheries might get bogged down in unnecessary bureaucracy. Many of these companies are made up of five employees or fewer, so we must ensure that the burden of bureaucracy is as small as possible.

There are concerns that once we have left the EU, we will no longer have an automatic right to land fish in any EU ports. That interesting point has already been raised today. While I am very enthusiastic about our getting out of the common fisheries policy and getting back these stocks of fish, we have to ensure not only that we have access to EU markets, but that too much of our fish is not landed in EU ports, because we have to make the best of the processing. All these things are essential. I know that some of them are not covered in the detail of the Bill, but they need to be recommended.

I feel that we can do a much better job with our own Fisheries Bill and by taking back control of our waters. Our fishermen, fish processors and anglers can and must have a better deal. I am sure that the Secretary of State and Ministers are aware that there is a huge expectation that we are going to do much better as an independent coastal state than as part of the common fisheries policy. Let us welcome the Bill, make a few little alterations that might be necessary, and do a much better job than has been done in the past under the CFP.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

With your permission, Mr Speaker, perhaps at Holland Park comprehensive we could make it part of the design and technology projects that our respective children are engaged in, to ensure that there are drinking fountains in west London and beyond.

We are working with water companies and other commercial operators to ensure that drinking fountains are more widespread. It was a great Victorian innovation to bring clean drinking water to everyone and ensure that we did not have to rely on private provision for the very stuff of life. We will ensure that there are more drinking fountains, and further steps will be announced later this year.

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

Some 3 billion litres of water a day are leaking out of water companies’ infrastructure pipes, which is enough to fill 1,273 Olympic swimming pools. Private companies have invested a lot of money in infrastructure in the past, but are they now spending too much on shareholders and chief executives, and not enough on actually securing the infrastructure? We need to save water, especially at a time of drought.

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the things I have said to the water companies is that in the past few years they have spent far too much on financial engineering and not enough on real engineering. As a result, new targets have been set to reduce leakage in order to both protect the environment and help consumers. One thing that would not help consumers, I am afraid, is Labour’s programme to renationalise the water companies, which would mean taxpayers’ money going into the hands of the same shareholders, rather than being spent on our environment.

Agriculture Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

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

This is an historic moment, as we last had an agriculture Bill in this House in 1947, since when there have been 15 Prime Ministers and many Governments. We therefore really need to get this Bill right.

The Bill is about agriculture and the environment not just today, but in the future, so I welcome our Secretary of State’s commitment on food security. During the Bill’s passage, I will look for us to adopt for England provisions similar to those in schedule 3 for Wales to ensure that we can support high-quality food production and high animal welfare standards in England and across the United Kingdom. Food security—the ability to have plenty of food, and good food, for our constituents—is very much a public good, and we will debate that further.

While I very much welcome the Bill, I am disappointed that my Select Committee was not offered the opportunity to subject it to prelegislative scrutiny. However, the Secretary of State and Ministers should not worry, because we will do our utmost to ensure that we scrutinise the Bill carefully, clause by clause. While the Bill is very good, I am sure that a little tweak here and there will not do it any harm.

I welcome the long transitional period because it gives farmers certainty over that time. We also need to ensure that as we build stewardship schemes, land management schemes and environmental schemes, we also enter into contracts with farmers of at least five to 10 years. Ministers and the Secretary of State might say that we cannot bind successive Governments, but we must ensure that we have a contract in place so that land management and farming can go hand in hand. We talk as though the environment, food production and farming are all separate, but they are not—they are very much combined. I believe that farmers are the original friends of the earth, and we will ensure that we deliver better soil, a better environment and great food while having as much food security as possible in this country.

I also welcome the Bill’s attempt to tackle unfairness in the supply chain.

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

Before my hon. Friend moves on, I share his ambition in those respects, but does he agree that as the general framework for subsidy support or payment for ecosystem services lies in this Bill, and the general framework for the environment will lie in the environment Bill, it is appropriate that issues such as the contracting he describes should be covered in secondary legislation?

[Neil Parish]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s intervention. He is right that that can be dealt with in secondary legislation, but I am, shall I say, a little bit naturally suspicious, so I am trying to ensure that we get everything covered as soon as possible. I like the Bill’s direction of travel towards the environment, but I am convinced that having good, healthy, affordable food is absolutely essential, and that is one of the issues towards which I will maintain my driving forces.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. The question of how the Select Committee will proceed under his chairmanship seems an important one to resolve. I think that many of us would welcome his driving on that issue, as long as it is done in a way that recognises that we are not trying to build it into the two pieces of primary legislation, which would confuse the issue.

[Neil Parish]

I will take on board my right hon. Friend’s wisdom, and we will look at that as we go through the Select Committee process to ensure that do not do that. I thank him for his intervention.

The Bill very much attempts to tackle unfairness in the supply chain. That is essential. We need to ensure that the groceries code covers all aspects of trade—from the big retailers through to the processors and right down to the big suppliers—so that we can have true fairness in the supply chain. Often, when a consumer buys a product, enough money is paid to the retailer to ensure that there is enough money for the producer, and it is a question of ensuring that that money then gets back to the producer. There is an uneven relationship, with producers often being the weaker partner and not having enough strength in the market.

I welcome the proposals to request data, which will improve transparency in the supply chain, but the way in which that increased transparency will improve fairness in the supply chain remains unclear. Furthermore, there are proposals to streamline support payments and reduce bureaucracy, which I believe we all welcome. I look forward to the Secretary of State and the farming Minister coming before our Select Committee to explain exactly how that can be done. Whether people love or hate the common agricultural policy, there is no doubt that we can have an agricultural policy that suits the four nations of the United Kingdom and that we can devise a better system than the one designed for the 28 countries of the European Union. I have direct knowledge of that, having previously chaired the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee, so I know that we can do better and I look forward to that.

We welcome this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape British farming and the environment. We can improve policies such as our stewardship scheme, for example by ensuring that it runs for a minimum of 10 years and involves forestry. We can also ensure that we do not have to work out when a tree is a sapling and when a sapling is a tree. If we want to include water management, our schemes can include planting trees on banks to hold back water and so on. We can do so much better, and I look forward to hearing about that from Ministers.

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman, who chairs the Committee on which I serve, agree that there is a real danger that it will be the big landowners and farmers who will be best able to apply for environmental grants? We have to guard against that by reducing bureaucracy, as he has indicated.

[Neil Parish]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. We have to ensure that applying for grants is simple enough for all farmers, not just the big landowners who can employ offices full of people to do that, and I believe that we can. With some of the ideas coming forward about how we make payments, we can also ensure that, as we transition, family farms and smaller applicants can have less taken from them in the first instance. There are ways we can make this much more palatable.

Upland farming, which the Secretary of State mentioned, is very important, especially because of lamb and beef production. It is coupled with that great environment on the hillside, and we will not be able to pay public money just to keep sheep and cattle on the hillside; we have to ensure that they are profitable. Profit is what will drive this because—this point has already been made—if you are in the black, you can go more green. That is absolutely essential.

We produce great food. We also have a very effective poultry industry, although sometimes that is not mentioned. That is why we can produce good-quality chickens for under £5. Let us look at how we deal with our food industry and our production.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

Does my hon. Friend agree that post Brexit there will be a real opportunity to buy “British first” through the procurement of British-sourced food?

[Neil Parish]

My right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour makes a really good point. We must redouble our efforts to encourage our armed forces, our schools and our health service to procure our high-quality British food. Let us ensure that we can feed our nation with our food, because that is absolutely essential.

I also think that healthy food, as a public good, can be recognised naturally across the piece. This is an agricultural Bill, but if we think about the NHS, we could save nearly £2 billion when we consider the type of healthy food that we can produce. Buying from local producers will allow us to reduce our carbon footprint and improve the environment, so we also need joined-up thinking about future-proofing the Bill. If we weaken our farming sector to the extent that we have to import more food from abroad, there will be many consequences. When we import food from other countries, we also import their water and their means of production, and some countries can little afford that. We have to ensure that we continue to produce good, high-quality food and that, if possible, we produce more of it in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

Let us move from north of the border to North Devon, where, I can assure you, Madam Deputy Speaker, my constituents are watching the progress of the Bill very carefully indeed. Farming is an incredibly important part of our local economy. More than 11% of workers are employed directly in the industry and, of course, that figure increases markedly when we look at all the small businesses and sole traders whose livelihoods rely directly on farming.

Let me be clear that, for us in North Devon, this is about more than just economics. Nearly three quarters of the entire land area of North Devon is farmed. To put it simply, the landscape looks as beautiful as it does because it is managed so expertly by our farmers. They are the stewards of our environment, particularly in an area such as mine with its diverse landscape, as the Secretary of State, who is not in his place, will know because he visited Exmoor over the summer to see the fantastic work being done by the Exmoor Hill Farming Network, which, under challenging circumstances, not only farms productively but looks after that national park environment.

Farming is incredibly important in North Devon, and to underline that I met more than a dozen farmers last Thursday. We had very useful and wide-ranging discussion about the Bill, and I want to thank the NFU in the south-west for arranging it. In that meeting, a series of reasoned and reasonable suggestions was put to me on how the Bill might be improved. I want to run through some of them now, but in doing so I want to make it clear that I will support the Government on Second Reading. I will not be supporting the Opposition’s amendment because, frankly, to decline to give this Bill a Second Reading would be entirely counterproductive and far more about politics than helping our farmers.

One of the main arguments made to me by the farming industry in North Devon is that the Bill needs to focus more on the fundamental purpose of farming, which is the production of food. This is an Agriculture Bill and its greatest impact will be on the industry that feeds our nation, so we must make clear that financial assistance is explicitly linked to agricultural activity. The Bill rewards farmers for public goods to deliver a cleaner and healthier environment, which is to be applauded, but the point made to me is that insufficient significance is placed on the greatest public good, which has to be the production of food in a safe way.

The reality is that financial support is absolutely critical to the survival of many of our farms. Without it, more than four in 10 of all British farms would probably make a financial loss or become economically unviable. Subsidies are crucial, and of course, historically, they have come from the EU under the common agricultural policy.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend is my constituency neighbour, and the interesting thing about many parts of Devon, and North Devon in particular, is that it is mainly permanent pasture and grassland, so farming in the sheep trade and beef trade will keep that environment and the good tourist attraction in the area. Those things are all linked.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

That is absolutely the case and that pasture is vital. I think that 51% of the farmed area of Devon is livestock grazing. It makes the county look how it does, and without financial subsidies, the farmers would not be able to undertake their important stewardship of that landscape.

The system of financial support that will replace the common agricultural policy will shape our rural economy for, frankly, generations to come, so it must be introduced cautiously, which is why I welcome the seven-year transition period and the powers in the Bill to extend it if necessary. I also welcome the fact that the Government have guaranteed the overall current level of subsidy spending until 2022—some £46 billion—but let us get the administration of the system right. There is a great deal of frustration among by farmers about the Rural Payments Agency, Natural England and the others who manage the system of payments. The system is not quite working as it should at the moment, and that is an understatement, so, please, in the new system under this Bill, let us get that right for farmers.

Public good is an integral part of the Bill and how payments will be managed. Domestic food production is in itself a public good. Importing food from other countries is environmentally damaging, because of the distances involved. British farmers have—it says here “some of the highest”, but I am going to change that—the highest welfare and quality standards in the world. I am in favour of the move to a system of payments based on the production of public goods, the productivity of our farms and the resilience of our agricultural sector.

I have a great deal of faith in my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, in the Minister and in the ministerial team, and I want them to give themselves more powers than the Bill provides. I want my right hon. Friend to have the same powers as the Bill gives to the Welsh Farming Minister in schedule 3, which has been talked about a great deal, and I ask that that be reviewed at a later stage.

We are leaving the EU—that decision has been made—so there is uncertainty ahead for our farmers. It is incumbent on us to end that uncertainty, and this Bill is an historic opportunity to do so. We must get the transition right. The Bill makes a good start, but I say in a supportive and helpful way that there is room for improvement. I will oppose the amendment and support the Bill on Second Reading to ensure that as proceedings on it continue, we make it the best Bill possible for North Devon farmers.