Fisheries Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Public Bill Committees

Without delving into the complexities of maritime law too much, for fear of boring everyone to death, it is fair to summarise that not everyone who is on the sea is paid a national minimum wage. Indeed, one of the key parts of crewing vessels sometimes with foreign crews is that the levels of pay afforded them can be at a lower rate than for British fishers. The House needs to send a message, as we did with the passing of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 and subsequent improvements to it, that there is a minimum standard for what we expect fishers to be paid in UK waters.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a large number of fishermen are paid a share of the catch? Therefore they may have a good day or a bad day. Were we to impose national minimum wage objectives, that type of payment system could well be disrupted.

[Luke Pollard]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the share fishing that many trawlers go with. I think the point is that there should be a base minimum. That debate on the consequences of a national minimum wage was held in Committee Rooms such as this when nearly all the Members now on the Opposition Benches were at school. The consequence of introducing a national minimum wage in fishing will be that all fishers are paid a basic level. That is especially true for those who are currently paid well below it, not because of a bad day at sea or weather obstructing fishing activity—I believe that that is what the right hon. Gentleman was suggesting—but because of the deliberate pay policy of the fishing organisation in question, to pay below the minimum wage, and in particular to pay foreign crews below the minimum wage.

The signal that the safety and workforce objective would send out in relation to that—although the Minister will no doubt say that subsequent work would be needed to sit behind it—would be a strong message that we expect a certain standard of pay for fishers. As to poverty pay for those fishing at sea, which is a dangerous profession, it would show that we as a newly independent coastal state, to borrow a phrase often used by the Conservative party, will set a high standard. Whether it is a matter of safety or pay, there is a profound case for high standards, especially for the foreign crews who are often paid less, which creates market distortion vis-à-vis the pay for British crews. There is an opportunity to level the playing field and create the basic standards that will say that safety and workforce issues matter. That is why the safety and workforce objective sends a clear message about our intentions.

I suspect that the Minister will disagree with most of what I have said, and I predict she will not want the objective to be in the Bill, but I hope she will be able to set out what measures the Government will take on the issue, recognising that there is a grey zone of responsibility, with safety sitting between the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Transport, while the minimum wage sits between that and fisheries.

[Mr Goodwill]

No one would doubt the importance of health and safety, but there is already an obligation in the Bill, in clause 35(1)(e), to be able to give help, in terms of health and safety funding. I suggest that the amendment is superfluous, given that the issue is covered elsewhere in the Bill.

[Luke Pollard]

The right hon. Gentleman highlights a good topic, which I did not touch on, but am happy to, about the optionality of safety. My view and that of the Labour party is that safety should be a minimum standard, not an optional extra. Under the clause 35 financial assistance powers, the Secretary of State has the ability to arrange financial assistance for

“maintaining or improving the health and safety of individuals who are involved in commercial fish or aquaculture activities”.

He has the ability to do that: there is not a minimum standard that insists on it.

If the right hon. Gentleman suggests that clause 35(1)(e), on which we can still table amendments as we have not reached it yet, should be a compulsory measure—that the Secretary of State should ensure that there is always funding to create a minimum standard—I would agree. In the absence of a minimum standard, clause 35(1)(e) solely suggests that the Secretary of State can fund such provision if he or she wishes. That is a very different point from a minimum standard, and that is why it is so important that there should be a safety and workforce objective that establishes at a high level the belief that there should be minimum standards.

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[Victoria Prentis]

I appreciate the intention behind both amendments 71 and 72. However, as anticipated by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, I feel that the law is already clear on both those points. I do not think it is necessary to amend the Bill in this way and I will go into some detail about why that it is.

As the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport gets to know me better, he will learn that I am never happier than when discussing older laws. My personal university and legal background make the Magna Carta a fascinating document to me—indeed, I was discussing with the Fisheries Bill team yesterday. He should not set me down trains of thought unless he wants to hear the responses.

On the proposed public access objective, the United Nations convention on the law of the sea—UNCLOS—establishes that the UK has sovereign rights to manage the marine resources within our exclusive economic zone, which obviously includes fish. I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that UK case law, which is slightly more recent than the Magna Carta, recognises clearly that those fish are a public asset, held by the Crown, for the benefit of the public. The public right to fish was confirmed most helpfully in a case called Malcolmson v. O’Dea in 1863. Legally, it is well established that no one individual can own the fish.

In terms of the rights to exploit and fish the fish, most UK fishing opportunities are managed, as the hon. Gentleman set out, through fixed quota allocation units. As he said, the High Court has held those units as a form of property right. Fixed quota allocation holders do not own the fish in the sea, but the FQA units entitle those holders to a share of whatever quota is available in that particular year. That is quite clear in the legal cases.

[Mr Goodwill]

Will the Minister recognise that there are exceptions to that in terms of royal fish, in that whales, porpoises and sturgeon become the property of the monarch? Indeed, in Scotland, any fish of that type that cannot be pulled on to shore by six oxen pulling a wain would qualify as royal fish, be the property of the Crown and be dealt with by the Scottish Administration on the Crown’s behalf.

[Victoria Prentis]

It is always a pleasure to give way to the former fisheries Minister, who has knowledge of areas of law I can only dream of.

Fixed quota allocation units do not confer a permanent right to quota, but Government policy, as set out in the fisheries White Paper—a document particularly beloved of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—is to maintain the FQA system, which has provided certainty to the industry for many years. That is important to those who have invested money in FQA units and very important to those who have borrowed money in mortgage form using FQA units as collateral.

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It is really important that that message is clear, because the changes necessary to protect our fish stocks, including ensuring that total allowable catches are not set above MSY levels—the level at which fish reproduce to replace fish lost through being caught—are really important. Sustainability has to be the future of the Bill. Indeed, later in Committee, the Minister should be prepared for our now annual amendment to change the Bill’s title to the sustainable fisheries Bill, rather than just the Fisheries Bill, because that message about sustainability is important and should be loud and clear.

[Mr Goodwill]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the wording proposed by the Lords would tie the hands of Ministers as they go to the annual fishing negotiations? Stocks are determined within a particular zone, and we could end up with the UK not being able to fish some of that stock because we could not take back to the UK the agreement that we would have made had we not been so encumbered.

[Luke Pollard]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for setting that out. Let me be clear: a Labour Government would not set total allowable catches above the maximum sustainable yield. Telling our European friends that we want a sustainable fishing industry is not giving the game away or betraying our fishers. It is setting out, clearly for all to see the fact that we manage our fish stocks sustainably and that we want a sustainable fishing industry, economically and environmentally. That is the level that we would approach this at. That is really important.

The right hon. Gentleman mentions the move to zonal attachment, rather than relative stability, which he knows Labour supports in relation to this. It is therefore important that we set the tone and the objective that our own fisheries waters need to be sustainable at that level. That is what the amendment to the Bill sets out—fisheries sustainability is the primary driver of fisheries management.

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[Mr Goodwill]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that there is a certain contradiction between what he is saying now and later amendments that he has tabled, which would indicate that fish destined for, say, the European market should be landed in the UK and then transported on trucks to their main market, rather than being landed closer to the market where they are going to be sold?

[Luke Pollard]

No, I disagree. I dislike the Conservative position of favouring landing fish in European ports, because we could be creating jobs in British ports. It is bad for our ports, and it betrays the promise that many people made during the Brexit referendum. It is something that we need to reflect on. We should land more fish in our ports, creating more jobs in our communities and, as a corollary, eating more of our own fish. We will return to that in future, but I do not feel that landing more fish in our ports and achieving net zero in fishing are in any way contradictory. Actually, both are necessary to have a fully sustainable fishing industry in the future, because sustainability needs to be economic and environmental—they go hand in hand.

Amendment 73 sends a really simple message: we want to see fishing achieve net zero, and we will require the Government to prepare a plan and to have an idea about how to achieve that. I hope the Minister has a plan for fishing achieving net zero, but I fear that this part of the debate has been wholly absent over the past few years. Outwith the larger debate about every single sector, but specifically on this sector, how will they work? We all know that fishing is not one sector but dozens of sectors operating within the wider remit, with different fishers catching different species of fish with different gear at different times of the year in different fishing zones. How does the plan to achieve net zero work for each of those sectors? There will be different approaches, especially with the carbon impact of certain boats.

I turn to the other amendments in this group, 74 to 79. I will talk only briefly, so that other speakers can contribute. On amendment 76, I suggest to the Minister that one thing she should take from this debate is that Ministers need to act faster than they have to date. In part, our sustainability work by Ministers, as a country, has been too slow and too passive. I hope that the Minister and her officials are hearing loud and clear from the Opposition that we want to see Ministers act faster on this.

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[Luke Pollard]

One of the difficulties of having so many amendments grouped together is that we cannot get into each one individually. That is a probing amendment to find out what the plan is. I will return to species in a moment, but to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question on bycatch, the discard ban was introduced with good intentions—to borrow the Minister’s phrase from earlier.

There is a real crisis of fish being discarded over the side of boats because people do not have the quota to catch that fish. Fishers are being put in a difficult position by existing regulations—regulations that Ministers themselves may decide on, even if under an EU directive on how things work. In mixed fisheries—which I believe is what is around Scotland, and is certainly around the west country, which I represent—for fishers to target specific species is difficult, resulting in an inevitable bycatch. The difficulty is that the discard ban states that a fisher cannot catch that, discard it or land it.

That poses questions about how a reformed discard ban would work under the new freedoms that the Minister has set out. Greater quota pooling, for instance, might be one way, especially for smaller boats, to make sure there is sufficient quota within a pool to ensure that bycatch is adequate there. There needs to be a greater understanding of the need to allocate more quota for some of those things, especially in mixed fisheries, to cope with that. The fundamental point—which I think the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute was getting at, and to which I hope the Minister will respond in the spirit in which the amendment was tabled—is that the discard ban currently does not work for our fishers and certainly does not work for our environment. The intention behind it is good. We need to preserve that intention, but also ensure that the fish our fishers are catching get a good price and are preferably landed at their local port.

The hon. Gentleman also noted at the start of his intervention, in relation to the difference between commercial fishing and recreational fishing, that there is a real challenge, which we will come to later, in applying restrictions to recreational fishers who are not taking the volumes of fish out of the water that some of our commercial friends are. There is a tendency to regard the two slightly differently, which I think he hinted at in his intervention.

To briefly return to the amendments, I am grateful to hear the Minister say that the Government have declared a climate emergency. That is very welcome news. My recollection of the debate is that the Government did not oppose the declaration but did not support it either. I am very happy to hear that the climate emergency declaration is now Government policy and not just parliamentary policy. The subtle distinction is important, because if it is a Government declaration of a climate emergency, the Minister has made a bigger announcement today than perhaps she wanted to. It is important, because we are in a climate emergency and there is a climate crisis that affects our fish stocks.

One area that the Minister hinted at, which is important and why Government amendment 1 needs to be looked at again, is the changes in fish and where they reside. As the Minister knows, fish do not follow international boundaries. Laws that seek to govern fish to follow international boundaries are problematic. The Minister set out how she hoped to ensure that those fish with high survivability are returned to the sea and not landed dead —I think she mentioned that in relation to amendment 78. I agree with her, but the Minister’s statement is at odds with DEFRA’s decision not to grant the bluefin catch-and-release fishery in the south-west, because bluefin tuna, bless them, have very high sustainability and can be caught time and again. The experience for the fish might not be one that many of us would like, but a fish in the sea is worth so much more to our recreational fishing sector that charters boats to recreational anglers than it is from being landed and eaten in our food supply chain. I agree with the Minister when she talks about high survivability and hope she will respond to that point.

The bluefin catch-and-release fishery was something that I mentioned in my remarks, and the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) also made a powerful case in support of it. The catch-and-release bluefin fishery would not only enhance our scientific understanding of the changes causing these wonderful creatures to enter more of our British waters, or to return after a great absence to our British waters, but could create an enormous number of jobs across the west country, and they could in due course appear in the North sea, where tuna was present before the decline of fish stocks.

I have taken up enough time on this. Suffice it to say that Labour Members disagree with Government amendment 1. We would like to see sustainability as the primary mover of sustainable fisheries. The message that removing that sends to all those that care about our oceans is a poor one. Fishing should be sustainable economically and environmentally, and we should be unafraid of saying that sustainability is the primary driver of fisheries management. If we do not have sustainable fisheries, we will not have jobs in fishing or the fish in the sea that we need. To pre-empt what you might be about to say, Mr McCabe, the amendments sandwiched between that and amendment 73 are designed to probe the Minister for an explanation of the position on each of those points—which she has done in part, with the challenges that I have posed. However, amendment 73, which concerns net zero and decarbonising our industry, is absolutely critical to the future of the sector. I hope the Minister will set out the Department’s, and indeed the Government’s, plans to decarbonise the industry. She needs to be under no doubt about how seriously we take the importance of hitting net zero for fishing.

[Mr Goodwill]

I rise in support of Government amendment 1. Nobody so far has talked about the role of the courts. I suspect that if the wording proposed by the Lords stays in the Bill, there will be a field day for the courts and well funded environmental non-governmental organisations, which will be fighting every step of the way to ensure that the prime fisheries objective of sustainability is taken to the nth degree. We have seen that already in how the courts have been used with general licensing.

For example, at the annual fisheries meeting with other independent coastal states such as Norway, we may well decide that, as a one-off, to take account of choke species and mixed fisheries, perhaps some stocks would be fished above maximum sustainable yield, as a short-term measure to sustain our fishing industries. That additional quota could be assigned to the Norwegian waters and EU waters, but the British fishing Minister would say, “I’m sorry, but although there’s more quota on offer, we cannot take it because we would be shot down in the courts.” There are many other situations in which the suggestions made by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport about being flexible and working with the sector would be tracked every inch of the way by environmental NGOs, which would be keen to take them to court.

[Luke Pollard]

The right hon. Member raises a hypothetical about total allowable catches being set above MSY. He knows well that total allowable catches are routinely set above MSY levels. It is not a once-in-a-moment opportunity; it is a regular occurrence, and it is leading to a decline in fish stocks. Therefore, sending the message to our fisheries that we will have sustainable fishing in our waters is not a bad one, because we are ultimately saying to those fisheries that if we do not set at MSY levels, there will be fewer fish in the sea for the future. Whether we set levels above MSY in conjunction with our European friends or otherwise, that contributes to a decline in fish stocks. Does he agree with that?

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[Mr Goodwill]

I agree with the hon. Member, but where levels are set above MSY levels, it is often for practical reasons to do with the sustainability of a particular fishing industry. It is also to do with choke species. We heard from the Minister how some fisheries would be closed completely were they not to be allowed a degree of choke species to be caught for which a quota is not allocated.

The point I am making is that the law of unintended consequences has not been seen clearly by the Lords. I believe many of our fishing communities would be decimated by action taken not by Ministers but by judges in interpreting the prime fisheries objective as sustainability. That would be an overriding objective and not one that Ministers could reasonably take to fishing communities in the four nations of the United Kingdom sustainably. I am therefore pleased to support the Minister in her amendment, which will prevent such an unintended consequence that even the shadow Minister, I think in his heart of hearts, understands could be a real problem.

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

I echo the words of the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport. We must set the tone and objectives for the negotiations, so it is critical to retain the cross-party amendment passed in the other place to make environmental sustainability the driving force and priority of the legislation. Removing that objective would put the fisheries sector at risk in the long term.

On Second Reading, the Secretary of State warned against creating a hierarchy of objectives, but the simple truth is that environmental sustainability must go hand in hand with economic sustainability, as we just heard. We cannot have long-term economic sustainability without first prioritising environmental sustainability, and that means prioritising fish stocks. Fisheries businesses cannot operate if there are no fish left for them to catch.

The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine made the good point that fisheries are striving to get those goals and achieve sustainability, but that must be enshrined in law. If we put environmental sustainability front and centre in the Bill, the rewards in the long term will be there for the fisheries sector to reap sustainably. We want fish stocks to recover and thrive, resulting in a more resilient marine ecosystem. That obviously leads to greater catches over the long term, supporting the fisheries sector and the coastal communities that rely upon it.

Fisheries Bill [Lords]

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Ways and Means resolution & 2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 1st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend is a long-time expert in fisheries policy, with direct experience of all the difficulties and shortcomings of the CFP, and she makes an important point. We have a particular problem, due to the unfair sharing arrangements under relative stability, of what is called choke species affecting our fleet, where there simply is not enough quota for fishermen to even be able to land their by-catch. As she says, the lack of quota for choke species causes a risk that the fleet has to tie up because they simply do not have the quota available to them. We set out in our White Paper a fairer sharing arrangement, so that there will be fewer choke species, but also an approach to managing discards that will enable us to charge a disincentive charge on fishermen who land out-of-quota stock, rather than force them to discard it at sea in a very wasteful way—so we remove the incentive to target vulnerable species but give fishermen left in a difficult position an option that they can exercise.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Will the Bill allow us to give grant aid to fishermen to have more selective fishing tackle, to enable them to not catch the choke species that cause these problems?

[George Eustice]

My right hon. Friend makes a very important point. I know that he was involved in crafting some of these measures during his time in DEFRA, and I can confirm that those measures remain in place. We have powers in the Bill to make grant payments to fishermen, in particular to support them in fishing in a more sustainable way and investing in the gear that enables them to do that. I was about to come on to that point.

As we plan for our future, we need to recognise the immense value of fishing to our local communities, and we want to ensure that our own industry is able to benefit from the new opportunities that will arise. The powers in clause 35 mean that we can set up new funding schemes and grants to support the development of port infrastructure, the development of our fishing industry and its capacity to manage an increased catch and to manage those sustainability issues.

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[Luke Pollard]

I hear that argument, but I also hear that it is not in support of British ports when landing more fish could create more jobs, and I think we need to think about what benefit will be gained from leaving the common fisheries policy. If there is an argument for only supporting those with fish caught under a UK quota and landed in foreign ports, creating jobs in foreign ports, that is an argument the hon Member is free to make, but it is not one that will be made by the Opposition.

Labour’s jobs in coastal communities amendment is designed to ensure that whether the boat is Dutch, Spanish, French, actually British or just flagged that way, boats fishing under a UK quota would be required to land the majority of their fish in British ports. This would create a jobs boom for fish markets, processers, fuel sellers, boat repairers and distributors. With the virus, the recession and the consequences of austerity, could our coastal communities not do with more jobs? I hope the Government will agree with that, not continue to support fish being landed in foreign ports and not creating jobs in our communities.

[Mr Goodwill]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Luke Pollard]

No. I am going to make some progress, because I have gone on for some time.

The backbone of British fishing is our small boat fleet. These boats and businesses are the ones the British public want to see benefit most from our exit from the common fisheries policy. While industrial fishing has its place, I make no apology for wanting a fairer share for our small fishers. With just 6% of the quota, the small boat fleet has two thirds of the jobs, and I think it could have more quota. Reallocating quota along social, economic and environmental grounds, even if just 1% or 2% of the total catch were to be reallocated, could increase what small boats can catch by 25%. This is the second jobs multiplier that Labour has proposed in this Bill. It would be huge for our small boat fleet, helping give them a platform to invest in new gear and boats and to hire more crew.

Such rebalancing could easily be absorbed by the big foreign-owned boat operators within the current range of variation of total allowable catch, yet this is a policy yet again opposed by the Conservative party. I know the largest fishing companies, mostly foreign-owned, are strong supporters of the Conservative party, but, to borrow a phrase, Labour’s policy is for the many fishers, not the few. I hope Tory MPs will not be looking at their feet as the Whips demand total loyalty to Downing Street and require them to vote this amendment down when the time comes, because our fishing communities need a strong voice in Westminster, not just more Whips’ instructions at the expense of coastal towns.

Labour will be tabling an amendment to ban supertrawlers pillaging Britain’s marine protected areas. The Greenpeace campaign on this issue has attracted the signatures of a number of Ministers, but, sadly, of not a single DEFRA Minister. Labour will table an amendment to ban supertrawlers of over 100 metres fishing in marine protected areas. Britain has not one supertrawler of over 100 metres, so Ministers and Conservative Members have an easy choice to make: whether they are on the side of British fishers or foreign-owned industrial supertrawlers, harvesting huge quantities of fish and plundering the very habitats that Britain regards as special. I hope that would be an easy decision, but we will have to see.

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[Deidre Brock]

I absolutely agree. I think there are major concerns on this and the Bill does not provide any sort of genuine framework. It is full of unknowns. It is built on the shifting sands of a Trade Bill where we have no idea what the outcome will be. Should we just shrug our shoulders and crack on? The fact that this Government have had more than four years to come up with this Bill and this is what they have arrived at is a disgrace. [Interruption.] I am sorry, but the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) is interrupting from a sedentary position.

We may be no longer contributing to the discussion on the common fisheries policy at the EU, but we will still, in effect, be subject to it or, even worse, getting the even less savoury end of the stick. Scotland’s fishing community is being sold out by the Tories once again: they were sold out as they went in and they are being sold out again as we leave the EU. Control of who can fish in Scotland’s waters will not be exercised by the Scottish Government, control over fishing in Wales will not belong to the Welsh and control over Northern Ireland’s fishing will not be decided in Stormont. Despite the bluff and bluster, that back door is wedged open.

There is a similar situation on the landing requirement, which was a creation of the amendment in the Lords—that only goes to show that it is not just the Government who do not get devolution. The landing requirement would be decided in Whitehall, after a brief consultation with the devolved Administrations—not an agreement with them, but a consultation. There is no scrutiny role for the legislators of the devolved Administrations, which are, after all, supposed to have a devolved competence in this area. The Scottish Parliament is being sidelined, as are the Senedd and Stormont.

Jack McConnell is the UK Government’s latest great champion in their futile campaign against Scottish independence, so it might be advisable for them to listen to him when he says, as he did in discussing this amendment, that he had

“some concerns about the constitutional principles relating to this amendment...I am concerned that the amendment simply talks about “consulting” the devolved Governments—particularly the Scottish Government, who have clear legislative authority—rather than “agreeing” with them a national landing requirement. I am interested in knowing the thinking on having a UK-wide national landing requirement imposed from the centre rather than agreed by consensus across the four nations”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 June 2020; Vol. 804, c. 270-71.]

I think that is code, from a former First Minister of Scotland, for, “It will never work.” So fishing devolved is fishing retained, and it does not end there. The right of foreign fleets to fish in Scottish waters will be determined more by the actions of the UK Government in entering into international agreements than it will be by the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament, as will be quotas and days at sea—or “fishing opportunities”, to use the jargon of the Bill. There is, in black and white, the preparation for the UK Government rendering our fishing communities subject to the CFP even after we have left the EU. Clause 24 allows the Secretary of State to determine the maximum quantity of seafish that may be caught by British fishing boats and the maximum number of days that they may spend at sea. That is qualified in subsection (2) as being exercisable in relation to satisfying

“an international obligation of the United Kingdom to determine the fishing opportunities of the United Kingdom.”

That is the CFP in a bilateral agreement. Again, the Secretary of State must consult, but does not have to reach agreement with the devolved Administrations. But those Administrations will be responsible for ensuring that the rules laid down by Whitehall are enforced—hardly a partnership of equals, is it?

In clause 38 more powers are reserved to Whitehall that would be more useful in the hands of the devolved Administrations, including provision about fisheries, aquaculture and other things, again sheltering under the umbrella of international obligations. There are powers to impose quotas, limit time at sea, mandate processing procedures, determine what gear can be used and how, decide how fisheries products can be marketed, impose regulations over landings, setting targets on marine stock and to monitor and enforce compliance with all those powers. That takes enforcement away from the devolved Administrations. Again, the requirement is only to consult, not to agree with the devolved Administrations.

[Mr Goodwill]

I am confused. If the hon. Lady had her way, she would give control back to Brussels, including Ministers from many countries that do not even have a fishing industry and have other fish to fry.

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[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

The waters around the UK are some of the richest fishing grounds in the world. I am sure the right hon. Member for Tynemouth (Sir Alan Campbell) will be pleased when I quote Nye Bevan, who famously said:

“This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish.”

It is not so well known that he went on to say:

“Only an organising genius”—

I think he used those words ironically—

“could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.”

Of course, Nye Bevan never knew about the common fisheries policy and the destructive effect that it could have.

The coal industry is being consigned to the history books, but our departure from the EU will open a whole ocean of opportunities for UK fishermen. While one could, during the European referendum debate, debate the pros and cons of EU membership for many sectors, such as agriculture, no sane person could argue that the common fisheries policy has not been an unmitigated disaster. The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) said that no one could see the benefits of Brexit for fishermen—well, no one apart from every single fisherman I have ever spoken to. It is amazing that the SNP, while talking of independence, wants to consign the control of our fish stocks to the European Union once again.

It is often said that Ted Heath sold out the British fishing industry. It is not quite as simple as that, because at the point that we joined the European Union, the interest of most of the fishing industry, including boats from Hull and Grimsby, was in Icelandic waters. It was only after the seventh cod war—I think the first one was in 1898, when the steam trawler was introduced—that the Icelandics increased their limit from 3 miles, ultimately to 200 miles. The relative stability calculations were based on a British fishing industry that was in those distant waters around Iceland and the Faroes, which is why we got a bad deal at the start.

The problem is that at the same time that we were catching cod and haddock—the two most commonly eaten fish here; you can have them in either breadcrumbs or batter, and that is basically what the British people eat in terms of fish—foreign vessels were catching all those other species that are often on menus abroad but rarely on menus in the UK, such as the John Dory, the megrim, the saithe and the ling. We have tried time and again to get British people to eat those species, but no British person seems to want to eat a fish that looks you in the eye while you are eating it. That is one of the problems. We lost a vital source of that fish from Iceland, and we still import most of the fish we eat and export most of the fish we catch. We now have the opportunity to increase our share of quota over time. Just as importantly, as the right hon. Member for Tynemouth said, we need to secure a trade deal, so that lobsters caught off Scarborough and Whitby can be exported free of tariffs or impediments to France, Spain and so on.

Many wish that we could impose a strict 200-mile limit from day one, like Iceland did, and exclude foreign vessels at the beginning. That is not realistic for a number of reasons. The need for agreement on trade is one. Some of the foreign skippers bought quota fair and square from British skippers, and we need to treat them fairly. Most important, fish stocks do not respect our 200-mile exclusive economic zone. Relative stability has been replaced by zonal attachment, so the UK will, like Norway already does, have to agree the sustainable catch for each quota species and then divvy up between the EU and the independent coastal states such as the UK. Our share needs to increase progressively, by negotiation. We have a great Minister to do that, and great officials, such as Nigel Gooding CBE, who understand the complexity of the zones and species very well.

The Bill also underpins the sustainability of our seas. I mentioned the advent of the steam trawler. As vessels become more powerful and technically more advanced, it has never been more important to limit fishing to sustainable levels. If, as a farmer, I sent all my sheep to market, I would not be surprised if there were no newborn lambs the following year. We must make sure that we get the export markets, as several Members have said. On that point, I hope the Minister will say something about the nomadic scallop fleet. It is an internal issue, but every year we get nomadic scallopers off the coast of Yorkshire, destroying our crab and lobster beds, smashing up the fish and, more important, often towing away whole fleets of pots, which cost thousands of pounds.

The Bill is an important element of taking back control. I hope it reaches the statute book quickly, unsullied by any Lords amendments.

Agriculture Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 12th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 5th March 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Daniel Zeichner]

New clause 26 is broadly similar to new clause 5, which my hon. Friend has just moved. She spoke powerfully about the plight of our county farms. She did mention, of course, successes in Cambridgeshire. I rarely find reason to praise Cambridgeshire County Council, but on this occasion, I think that it is doing good work.

As farms owned by local authorities that can be let out at below-market rents—I suspect that there is agreement on this—they are a vital means to encourage young and first-time farmers into the sector. They provide a key way in for those who have not had the good fortune to inherit or are lacking the capital required to buy or rent. As well as offering a sustainable income stream for local authorities, these farms have been recognised as particularly well placed to deliver locally driven social and environmental goods, ranging from tree planting and local education initiatives on farming to public procurement of locally produced food.

As we have heard, however, county farms have been left in serious long-term decline. An investigation last year by Who Owns England? showed that the acreage has halved in the past 40 years—first driven by the privatisation drive and cuts to county budgets and powers under the Thatcher and Major Governments, and by the austerity agenda in recent times. Cash-strapped local authorities making difficult decisions have been forced to take cost-saving measures, and 7% of England’s county farms estate was sold off between 2010 and 2018, with three quarters of all smallholding authorities having sold parts of their estate.

As we have heard, some authorities, such as my own in Cambridgeshire, have recognised the importance of county farms and have increased the number of acres in the past decade. Interestingly, they are now bringing in a sustainable income for the authorities. I am told that, in Cambridgeshire’s case, that is in excess of £4 million each year. However, the situation is not so good elsewhere. I am told that Herefordshire, for instance, has sold many of its county farms; there has been a decline of 89%.

The Government’s recent policy document on farming for the future mentions that funding will be offered to councils with county farm estates, but we still have no clear detail on how much that would be and whether it would be sufficient. It is rather surprising that in a flagship Bill on reforming our agricultural system—

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Are there any examples of where local authorities have sold the farms but to the tenants so that they can become owner-occupiers—a sort of right-to-buy scheme —or are the farms being sold off outside the sphere of those tenants?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I do not know the answer, but I am happy to go away and look for it, because that sounds like an interesting idea.

Let me explain what our worry is. We are here discussing major, flagship legislation for the future of the sector, and to us it would seem sensible to ensure that there was provision for this very important part of the sector, particularly when there was such an opportunity, through the local authorities, to deliver a range of public goods, including land management practices that mitigate climate change; public access; and even the promotion of innovative food production systems, such as vertical farms or city farms. If local authorities were to build into their management practices for their smallholdings the aims of aiding nature recovery and carbon sequestration and of promoting biodiversity, county farms could be a very useful tool for local communities, particularly in areas such as mine, where we have such interest in environmental issues being promoted.

It is important that we stop the loss and refresh the purpose of our county farms. I am not sure that that makes it easier for local authorities, because they are making difficult decisions, but it would make it harder for them to make that particular decision.

--- Later in debate ---

As with new clause 5, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East, our new clause 6 would require any authority with smallholdings to submit proposals on how they expected to manage their estate to provide opportunities for new farmers, provide educational and environmental land management practices, ensure opportunities for increasing public access to land and understanding of sustainable farming, and provide support for improved food productions, such as vertical or city farms.

[Mr Goodwill]

What does the hon. Gentleman think about the example of Staffordshire County Council? When selling off farms, the council has given tenants the first opportunity to buy, but if that has not happened it has sold the farms with sitting tenants. The tenants continue their tenancies, but the council can use the money to spend on other priorities, such as schools, getting homeless people into housing and all the other local authority priorities.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I appreciate what the right hon. Member says. We are not seeking to stop that kind of process. We are trying to make it more difficult for councils to respond to funding cuts by selling county farms, which in some ways I do not criticise because they face difficult choices. If that practice is not stopped, then, frankly, it will go on happening, unless there are significant changes in funding for local authorities.

In recognition of the key role that local authorities can play in incentivising these farms to be environmental public goods, we would also require local authorities to submit proposals on how they intended to manage their smallholdings in a way that contributed to those various public goods, including the mitigation of climate change and reducing gas emissions. As discussed, our new clause would also limit the continued disposal of farms by stipulating that no local authority smallholding would need to have its ownership transferred unless that was clearly in accordance with those purposes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Jones]

I am pleased to speak to new clauses 15 and 16. We know that our planet and climate are experiencing huge change, and the effects of the climate emergency are becoming an increasing feature of the world in which we live, affecting not just humans, but our natural world and our wildlife. The new clauses call on the Government to think about biodiversity, the uplands, the fragile and insecure rural economy, and the many people who live and make their way of life in our green and open spaces. The new clauses are also about the welfare of our wildlife. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East has campaigned on such issues over many years, and I pay tribute to her tenacity and commitment to animal welfare and our environment.

The weight of the scientific evidence before us is such that we can see that driven grouse shooting damages habitats, pollutes our water, increases greenhouse gas emissions, and involves the illegal persecution of birds of prey. The practice also increases the risk of floods, which damage properties and green spaces and lead to devastating deaths of people and animals alike. Right now, flooding is an issue of real concern for many people up and down the country. Those of us who were present for yesterday’s Opposition day debate on flooding heard powerful stories illustrating the need for upstream land management to prevent downstream flooding. As shadow flooding Minister, I was delighted that the Opposition motion received support from both sides of the House, including the Government Benches. By voting with us, the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) showed that, sometimes, politics does not need to win but common sense can.

The new clause addresses the effects of a practice that cuts across many different and important issues, and the Minister can surely support it. It would allow us to look at specific areas such our soil, drainage and hydrology, conservation, wildlife crime, and the wider concern about sustainability. As legislation such as this Bill passes through the House, we have the chance to address the many issues that have fallen off the to-do list. Let us take the opportunity new clauses 15 and 16 offer to commission a review so that we can methodically, clearly and carefully work our way through those important issues. The future of our planet and our natural world is in our hands, so let us get on and save it.

[Mr Goodwill]

My North Yorkshire constituency includes about two thirds of the North York Moors national park and vast areas of heather moorland, which is a glory to behold in late summer when the heather is in flower. Indeed, many people flock to the area to see the natural beauty of the landscape and to enjoy all the activities that take place there.

A grouse moor is a fragile environment. Historically, much of the area was forest. It was only when the trees were cut down for domestic fuel or to turn into charcoal to smelt with the limestone that was mined in the area that the forest disappeared. If we do not look after the heather in the right way, we will not keep it for very long. It needs managing not only for grouse, which cannot be reared artificially—it is an indigenous species in this country and needs to be reared in the wild—but for other species, particularly ground-nesting birds such as golden plover and lapwing, which rely on that fragile environment.

I join hon. Members who condemn the illegal persecution of raptors, but it is the case that by managing the moorland, the small mammals, birds’ eggs and other prey that the raptors feed on are facilitated. When we consider how to maintain those areas, it is important to listen to the experts. In an article, the North York Moors national park ranger David Smith said:

“Controlled burning is used to manage the heather better. After 15 to 20 years the heather gets old and leggy and you need different age structures for the wildlife that lives on the moor.

Grouse shelter underneath the older heather and the fresh new heather is more palatable for both sheep and grouse. What people don’t realise is that the North York Moors is a managed moorland. If you don’t stay on top of it, it would turn back to woodland, with birch and rowan trees quickly re-establishing themselves.”

The article continues:

“Cutting the heather, the alternative to burning, does work, but on very stony ground or uneven ground…it’s impractical”.

David Smith says:

“If you only cut the heather, you leave smaller vegetation close to the ground, it doesn’t destroy everything which is needed to give the new growth a fresh start.

Controlled burns flash across the top of the moor. They don’t destroy the seed bank. If you cut the heather, brash is left behind and smothers what’s underneath. It stops it from regenerating and slows down regrowth.”

The article concludes:

“Another reason for controlling the heather is to allow the sheep to move about more easily”

and to provide tender young growth for the sheep, particularly the young lambs, to graze.

We have obligations regarding CO₂ and we need to protect our peat areas, but the deposition of new peat is glacial in pace. If we want to use those areas as a carbon sink, we should follow the advice of George Monbiot and plant more trees. Perhaps we should plant more trees, but not at the expense of our traditional moorland. We should also make a distinction between blanket bog, such as the bog on Saddleworth moor, which tends to occur in the west of the country, and the dry heathland found in other parts of the country, particularly in the east. We saw on the news the apocalyptic scenes on Saddleworth moor when it was on fire in February 2019. During the recent fires in Australia, much criticism was made of the absence of what they called back burning. I maintain that the controlled burning of small areas of the moorland, at a time of year when those fires are unlikely to get out of control, means that we have natural fire breaks. I suggest that the new clause is not needed.

I suggest that there are those in this country who oppose grouse shooting for reasons that are not particularly environmental, but are to do with animal welfare or with the people who go shooting, whom they may not like. We should not use a false environmental argument to stop the traditional management of the moorland. My wife’s grandfather managed a moor at Troutsdale until he retired. That moor is not a moorland now; there are no grouse, there are no lapwings; it is brash and trees are growing rapidly. If it is not kept on top of and managed, that type of habitat, which is unique in Europe, is not preserved. We need to protect it.

[Victoria Prentis]

It is a genuine pleasure and honour to be surrounded by so many knowledgeable and committed environmentalists. The Government consider that shooting activities can bring many benefits to the rural economy, and in many cases are beneficial for wildlife and habitat conservation. We recognise that it is vital that wildlife and habitats are respected and protected. We will continue to work to ensure a sustainable, mutually beneficial relationship between shooting and conservation. There is no need for a commitment to review driven grouse shooting, as defined in the new clause, because we are already considering these issues. If there were to be a review, it might be more efficient and effective to consider other forms of grouse shooting and wider moorland management where there are no grouse, alongside driven grouse shooting.

The Government are already addressing rotational burning associated with grouse moor management on protected blanket bog. We have always been clear of the need to end burning on protected blanket bog to conserve vulnerable habitats, and we are actively looking at how legislation could achieve that. Our intention has always been to legislate if a voluntary approach fails to deliver. Real progress is being made in promoting sustainable alternatives, including consent for cutting of vegetation as an alternative to rotational burning, and removing or modifying consents to burn as higher level stewardship agreements are renewed. We have urged landowners to adopt those measures and continue to work with them constructively.

The recently released Werritty review addresses those issues in Scotland. The group’s report recognised the socioeconomic contribution that grouse shooting makes to Scotland’s rural economy, but made a number of recommendations that are currently being considered by the Scottish Government. We will watch closely to see how they respond. We do not rule out the possibility of a wider review into grouse moor management in the future, but I would not want to restrict that just to driven grouse management. Once Scotland has announced its plans, we will consider the benefits or otherwise of regulatory alignment between the two jurisdictions. I therefore ask the hon. Lady to withdraw the new clauses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Picture this: it is a lovely sunny day and everyone is outside. Kids are playing in the park, with their mums and dads looking on. What we do not often think about when we picture these happy scenarios, because we do not look for them, are herbicides, fungicides and insecticides. They may well be blowing in on spores and from nearby crops or, more directly, kids may be playing on grass in a park that has been treated with pesticides or weed-killing chemicals.

Quite rightly, we are now being told every day because of coronavirus that we need to wash our hands and not touch our mouths, eyes or nose. In more usual times, we are perhaps a bit more slack about possible transference of dangerous substances into our bodies—and these substances can be dangerous. A selection of the labels on pesticide products used in the UK contains warnings such as “Very toxic by inhalation”, “Do not breathe spray/fumes/vapour”, “Risk of serious damage to eyes”, “Harmful: possible risk of irreversible effects through inhalation”, “May cause cancer by inhalation”, and even “May be fatal if inhaled.” Cornell University’s work on pesticides points to the risk of deformities, mutations, cancer and poisoning of the nervous system. These are dangerous chemicals, and we need to keep a close eye on their impact.

Children and pregnant mothers are more exposed to the potential impact of pesticides than most of us, because they have a higher exposure rate. Children absorb pesticides more easily through their skin: not only is a child’s skin more permeable than an adult’s, but their skin surface area is higher relative to their body weight. That makes it easier for them to absorb higher rates of pesticides; in fact, infants will absorb around three times more pesticides than adults from similar exposure episodes. Children take in more air, water and food than adults relative to their body weight, which also increases their exposure. As an example, the breathing rate of a child in its first 12 years is roughly double that of an adult, and as a result the amount of airborne contaminants reaching the surface of the lung can be much higher.

Not only is exposure likely to be higher, but that child’s ability to cope with pesticide poisoning will differ from that of an adult. The systems in our bodies used to deal with toxins are less well developed in children, which can make them less able to cope with such substances than adults. As they grow, children’s brains and bodies undergo complex changes that affect tissue growth and organ development. Incidents of exposure that would be tolerated by adults can cause irreversible damage to unborn babies, infants and adolescents. What is worrying about this Bill is that not only does it completely omit any requirement for the protection of human health and the environment from pesticides, but it does not make a single recommendation for simply monitoring pesticides or their effects.

[Mr Goodwill]

One of the ways in which farmers can reduce their reliance on pesticides is by using new varieties derived though gene editing. Potatoes can be engineered to be resistant to blight, for example. Do Labour Front Benchers support that innovative technology that will reduce our reliance on pesticides?

[Daniel Zeichner]

Aha! As ever, I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He has touched on a subject that is of some interest to me, as I chair the all-party parliamentary group for life sciences. I look forward to having a detailed conversation with him about CRISPR-Cas9 and other exciting techniques.

In answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s question, we are absolutely interested in looking at ways in which we can reduce pesticide use. As I indicated earlier, I am well aware that farmers do not use pesticides without due caution, or without bearing in mind the current safety regulations and the costs involved. Having said that, we believe there should be additional measures in this Bill. We fully accept that pesticides are needed in some situations, but other new technologies might be available, including drones and satellite images that have the potential to make the application of these chemicals much more targeted and less damaging. I am told that those techniques are already being used in other countries, but if we are not monitoring pesticides and their impact, there is no way that we will be able to encourage or assist farmers to adopt more selective and less damaging techniques.

All Members present have been repeatedly promised by Ministers that when we left Europe, we would bring in stronger human and environmental protections, or at least equivalence. The Labour party believes that that is an absolute minimum, we should monitor what impact pesticides are having; where that impact is concentrated; and whether children, mothers and babies have been affected, especially in rural communities where exposure is likely to be higher. This amendment does not ban anything. It does not stop any farmer who needs to use safe pesticides on their crops, or to use them to increase their yields, from doing so. It simply states that we are not averting our gaze, but keeping our eyes open to the known risks; that we look to reduce those risks; and that we will particularly protect women and children in rural communities. On that basis, I ask that the clause be read a Second time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadia Whittome]

The Government’s much-delayed response to the Godfray report, published this morning, finally concedes to implement more effective methods of containing bovine TB, such as cattle and badger vaccinations. Of course, scientists, activists and politicians have been saying that for years. Can the Minister explain why it has taken the culling of an estimated 130,000 badgers for the Government to come to the same conclusion that most of us came to years ago? Will she provide an estimate of the number of badgers that will be killed before the switch to vaccinations and other non-lethal preventive measures?

The Government’s U-turn on the badger cull is welcome. I would like to think that it is because the Prime Minister knew that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge and I were going to speak to the issue, but I suspect there is someone else he listens to more. It is simply inexcusable, however, that further inhumane killing of this iconic species will continue for several years, especially as the Government have conceded that that is not the most effective strategy for containing bovine TB.

The former Government adviser Professor Ranald Munro recently said that a large number of badgers are likely to have suffered “immense pain” during culls. It is evident that the correct thing for the Government to do would be to bring forward the ban and start implementing non-lethal alternatives without delay.

[Mr Goodwill]

Is the hon. Lady not aware that we do not yet have a vaccine that allows us to identify the difference between a vaccinated animal and an infected animal? Until we have that type of vaccine, it will not be possible to make the switch.

[Nadia Whittome]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but the state of the science does not prevent the new clause from being made. New clause 21 provides the Government with an opportunity, on the day that they released their long-awaited response to the Godfray review, to urgently put an end to the inhumane and ineffective badger cull, rather than allowing it to continue for another five years.

Agriculture Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 11th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 5th March 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Deidre Brock]

These amendments once again go to the heart of the devolved settlement, and the question of whether for Scotland, “taking back control” means actually taking back control. The principle is that Scotland should be the arbiter of her own schemes and provisions, and should decide what is covered in them. There should be no role for a Secretary of State in the UK Government to be an overlord for Scotland’s agricultural sector, or for its support schemes. It makes sense for Scottish Ministers, overseen by the Scottish Parliament, to make those decisions.

I appreciate that, as we have already heard, the opinion of the UK Government is that compliance with the WTO agreement is an international obligation, and that the final decision should rest with them. I remind them that the Scottish Administration have had cases where they have been held liable for infringements of international agreements. I argue that Scotland’s Government should not be reliant on the UK Government to get those decisions right in order to avoid being stung by the consequences. Scotland is more than capable, I assure all hon. Members, of getting these things absolutely right on its own.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

It seems somewhat ironic that with all those policies, the Scottish National party would abdicate the decisions to Brussels; certainly on agriculture and fisheries policies, particularly those involving trade, Brussels would be making the important decisions.

[Deidre Brock]

I am not really inclined to rehearse all the arguments of the Brexit situation back and forth—they have been ongoing for some time. I am certain the right hon. Gentleman is well aware of the Scottish Government’s views on these issues, as well as those of the SNP group at Westminster.

I will refrain from pointing out that the WTO is falling apart at the moment, unfortunately, as a result of the actions of the US President, because that would be beneath my dignity, but it should be borne in mind that without a tribunal system, the WTO simply does not function. The point of the amendments is simply to ensure that Scotland has the freedom of movement to ensure that it complies with the agreements, whether or not the UK does. That seems a very fair and equitable way to do things. I hope the Minister will take that into consideration and agree to my proposals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

I have to say that I do not normally find myself in agreement with the Daily Mail, but on this occasion there may be something in it. The important point is that there are clearly people close to Government who have dramatic views that seem different to those of the vast majority of Conservative Members, as well as Labour Members. It is a question for the Government to decide who they choose to seek advice from, but it can hardly be denied that it is out there.

[Mr Goodwill]

Does the hon. Gentleman recall that in an earlier evidence session George Monbiot advocated for precisely those points, and argued for desisting in the production of sheep and cattle on the uplands and planting them with trees? Does he subscribe to that view, as espoused by The Guardian?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, but there is a subtle difference between witness evidence and the evidence that has been given in the important Dimbleby review on our future food policy. I think there is a difference, but, as always, I respect his observation.

Moving on from jousting about newspapers, it is important that to have a discussion about levels of food security, as I have mentioned. It is an intellectually plausible position to say that we do not have to produce our own food and that we could become like Singapore. That is an important political debate that should be had transparently, not in private emails between advisers. Without proper legal protection in place, many people will feel that whatever the Government say will just be warm words.

To go back to the point raised by the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton, at the last DEFRA questions the previous Secretary of State said pretty much what she just said. She said:

“Our high environmental, animal welfare and food safety standards are already in law, including legislating to prevent the importation of chlorinated chicken or hormone-treated beef”.—[Official Report, 6 February 2020; Vol. 671, c. 438.]

We were interested by that statement. Can the Minister clarify further the statement that they are “already in law” by providing the details of the legislation where those standards can be found? Can she explain what mechanism would be used if the Government are required in a trade negotiation to amend or remove any of the standards and describe, in that scenario, the level of parliamentary scrutiny that would apply?

That should be good ground for the Minister as she is an esteemed lawyer. I am neither esteemed nor a lawyer, so I was grateful that, after the exchange at DEFRA questions, the shadow Secretary of State sought advice. We have advice from the House of Commons Library and—guess what?—it is complicated. Inevitably, trying to unravel the complexity of bringing EU law into domestic law and the overlaps is difficult. I suspect the law would need to be tested and, as ever, different lawyers would give different advice; that tends to happen. Some think that EU-derived domestic legislation covering these matters could, in some circumstances, be changed by the Government using delegated powers in the Food Safety Act 1990, without the need even to seek parliamentary approval, let alone primary legislation.

We are questioning the Government on this. My hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State queried it with the previous Secretary of State, and we await a response with interest, because it is an important point. However, the seeming lack of clarity hardly fills us with confidence, because this is such an issue. Clearly, in the interests of certainty and clarity—which, in fairness, we can agree we do not have—we should put this in the Bill. We should agree an amendment to create a proper legislative guarantee that future trade deals will not allow imports of agricultural goods used to lower environmental, public health, and animal welfare standards. This is that amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

It is, because it was made clear that there would be a clear response. I suspect that the issue is complicated and people are working on it, but I absolutely share my hon. Friend’s concern. This is something we need clarity on.

[Mr Goodwill]

I absolutely understand and sympathise with the hon. Gentleman’s objectives. His new clause talks about “agricultural goods”, which presumably includes animal feed. It is pretty much accepted that environmental standards in Brazil, Argentina, the United States and Canada are lower than ours. Would the new clause ban the importation of all agricultural feed, including soya beans and maize, into the United Kingdom, should the exporting country’s environmental standards not be as high as ours, given that those products are mixed, so it could not be done on an individual farm basis?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I fully accept that the provision would need to be thought through and worked through in future. My point is that in general we must be careful about such changes, because I do not want our agriculture sector to be put at a disadvantage.

We do not want what I have just been outlining to happen. I suspect that the Minister and the vast majority of her colleagues do not want it to happen either. I mentioned the chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef, and it is worth spending a moment to remind ourselves of the exact nature of the kinds of low-standard food imports that we need to guard against.

When it comes to a trade deal with the US, we know that by and large its regulations on farm animal welfare are substantially lower than those of the UK. My understanding is that the US has no federal regulations at all in many of the areas in which the UK has enacted detailed regulations. The RSPCA raised, in evidence, the fact that 55% of the pork meat and bacon that we eat is imported. Virtually all of it comes from the EU, which follows comparatively high standards of production.

If we start going to the US, where they still use sow stalls and inject pigs with ractopamine, both of which are rightly illegal in UK pig farming on animal welfare grounds, we completely undermine our moral commitments against those practices, and allow undercutting of our farmers, who are committed to such higher standards. I remind members of the Committee that ractopamine is a feed additive used to manipulate growth in pigs, which has been shown to be highly detrimental to pig welfare, causing lameness, stiffness, trembling and shortness of breath. There is a reason we do not use it. It is the same for hormone-treated beef, which is produced in the US by injecting cattle with growth hormones to generate greater mass more quickly. That is banned in the EU on animal welfare and public health grounds.

The issue with the chlorinated chicken produced in the US is that the chickens have been kept in such dismal and intensive conditions that the chlorine is required to wash off the pathogens that they have become infected with during rearing and slaughter. The principle is animal welfare, but there is also a real question over food safety. Of course, we heard evidence on that. It is fair to say that there is dispute about the comparative rates of food-borne illnesses in the US and the UK but, as we heard from Professor Keevil of the University of Southampton, there are now studies that suggest that chlorine washing is not as effective as was once thought, and can make pathogens undetectable without actually killing them, so that they may remain capable of causing disease.

I feel strongly that those are not products that we want on our shelves or in our freezer cabinets. I will echo the words of the president of the National Farmers Union, who last week delivered this statement to a clearly discomfited Secretary of State:

“To sign up to a trade deal which results in opening our ports, shelves and fridges to food which would be illegal to produce here would not only be morally bankrupt, it would be the work of the insane.”

I might not have used exactly the same words, but I agree with the sentiment, and I think that the Secretary of State was discomfited because he knows that she is right.

It is crystal clear that we need a safeguard. How on earth do the Government expect to negotiate their way out of this, when the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has clearly said that chlorinated chicken must be part of any UK-US trade agreement? Why not come clean and admit that in the negotiations there will be trade-offs, one of which, sadly, could be selling out our farmers and our environment?

New clauses 30 to 32 are particularly interesting, and members of the Committee who have read them will note that they are detailed. They may think, “Gosh, what a clever bunch they are on the Labour side.” They may not—but it is actually better than that. Let me explain where the new clauses came from. I suspect that some Members already know, and I hope that the Minister was warned when she took the job. The new clauses—the exact words—were tabled to the previous Bill by none other than the current Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice). That Bill never reached Report and there was no opportunity to debate the new clauses. I am grateful to eagle-eyed experts from an organisation that shall remain nameless—they know who they are—for drawing them to our attention.

We judge that it would be of use to the Committee to consider the new clauses. They are deeply probing and have an illustrious pedigree, because they first saw the light of day during the brief, tricky period when the current Secretary of State was on the Back Benches, having resigned his post over a difference of opinion with the then Prime Minister about our relationship with the European Union. To some extent, we are slightly puzzled that those amendments have not been re-tabled by the Government for this version of the Bill. It would be useful to hear the Minister explain why the Government apparently now feel that these worthy proposals, tabled then, are not worth revisiting now. I will choose my words carefully, because the Secretary of State is clearly not part of the Committee. I ask the Minister, why does she not agree with the proposals? Perhaps she does.

We were particularly struck by what these new clauses seemed to be looking to achieve. Members of the Committee will agree that they deal with complex and technical matters on which a degree of expertise is needed in matters of animal health and veterinary pharmaceutical practice. Our understanding is that the aim here was to place in primary legislation many of the protections and safeguards on food safety and animal welfare that already currently exist in secondary legislation, both retained EU and domestic. The force of the proposals would be to ban the sale of animals or products from animals that have been treated with a range of compounds whose use is currently illegal in this country, except in restricted circumstances where they are being used under veterinary supervision for veterinary therapeutic purposes, and only then if residues are acceptably low.

It is truly a fascinating read to see what these compounds include. Schedule 1 lists testosterone, progesterone, oestradiol 17β, stilbenes and trenbolone, which are all hormones permitted as growth promoters in US beef production. The beta-agonists listed are used as growth promoters, more commonly in pig production, and I believe that ractopamine, which I mentioned earlier, would be classified under that category.

Most interestingly, new clause 31 would prohibit the sale, for hygiene reasons, of any animal product that comes from animals being treated with any substance other than potable water for the purpose of removing surface contamination. By my understanding, that would essentially preclude the sale of chlorine or oplactose-acid washed chicken in this country.

[Mr Goodwill]

New clause 31 does not actually refer to post-slaughter use and, as it is sloppily drafted, would apply to the washing of show animals at shows, the use of saline solution for washing eyes or, indeed, the use of diluted sheep dip after docking of sheep. Does the hon. Member recognise that the new clause needs tightening up? It refers to an animal during its entire lifecycle.

[Daniel Zeichner]

As ever, I am hugely grateful to the right hon. Member, whose drafting skills I would happily draw on in trying to improve the amendments. He will reflect that the new clause was sloppily drafted not by Opposition Members, but by the current Secretary of State. We are very happy to work with the right hon. Member on improving it, but I think he knows what was being referred to in those circumstances.

It seems to us that the Government are currently refusing to include in the Bill a ban on food imports produced to lower standards than our own. They have also dodged amendments to the Bill that were suggested previously by the current Secretary of State himself, which seemed to aim to ensure the exact same thing—banning the sale of animal products in this country that had been subjected to chemicals and processes that we do currently allow here.

What exactly has been going on? The Minister needs to come clean on this. The Secretary of State did not include these prohibitions either in the previous Bill or in the current Bill, even though he was the Minister in charge of both Bills. What came over him when he briefly left the Government? What conditions was he made to accept when he agreed to come back and then to become Secretary of State? Does this whole episode not show that, in his heart of hearts, he probably agrees with us that the only way to safeguard our animal welfare and food safety standards and to prevent our hard-pressed British farmers from being undercut by cheap, sub-standard imports, is to put these provisions in the Bill?

We believe that new clause 1 is the crucial amendment. It would not just strengthen the Bill but safeguard its core aims. We make no apology whatever about pressing it to a vote. I urge the Minister to listen closely to the unanimity of voices on this amendment and to recognise the need for this addition to the Bill. I appreciate that this is a tough moment for Government Members. As they vote, they must be aware that the future of many of their constituents is on the line. I want to safeguard their future, our countryside and our food safety.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I rise to support everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge has said on new clause 1. I shall also speak to new clause 4, which was tabled by the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), with the support of many of his Conservative colleagues. At the moment, I am the only Labour Member whose name has been added to it, but I am sure that many others would join me on Report.

Some of us sat on the Committee that considered the first draft of the Agriculture Bill in the last Parliament. I was also on the Environmental Audit Committee and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, as well as part of as various all-party parliamentary groups, and there were also debates on these matters in the Chamber and at oral questions. Ministers, including the then Secretary of State for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Farming Minister and, at various points, the International Trade Secretary, gave us verbal reassurances.

There was a bit of a trajectory, because in the early days, we could get Ministers to say only that UK standards would be protected. Eventually, after lots of prompting on our part, some of them—although certainly not on the International Trade side—said that that also applied to imported goods. The Minister needs to reflect on why it is very clear, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge said, that those assurances are not believed. The absolute fact of the situation is that everyone, from the NFU to environmental and consumer groups, wants those things enshrined in law, as do the Conservative Members who have signed the new clause.

The Minister has talked about including those assurances in a trade Bill, but when the Trade Bill was introduced to Parliament, we were fobbed off. We tried to get something in there, but were told that it applied only to current trade agreements and not to future ones, although some legal opinion said that it did. When we tried to discuss that during the passage of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill and all the discussions about Brexit, we were told that it would pop up somewhere else. That game of musical chairs just does not wash with people. We want to see this measure in the Agriculture Bill because it specifically relates to food standards and animal welfare, as we have heard in detail.

I remember trying to bring the matter up during arguments about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, way before Brexit. The then Member for Streatham, who was our shadow Business Secretary, made great play about the NHS being at risk under TTIP. When I started trying to talk to him about chickens, he looked at me as if to say, “What on earth is she on about now?” Now, the chickens have come home to roost—metaphorical chickens—and everyone knows about the issue, but nobody is convinced that the Government are willing to support preventive measures.

We spoke earlier about articles in the Daily Mail and The Guardian. I will quote a Guardian article from 6 March—hon. Members are probably ready to sneer at it—which said:

“Agriculture in the US remains quite backward in many respects. It retains a position of resisting more information on labels to limit consumer knowledge and engagement.”

The vested interests involved in the US food sector are absolutely immense, with huge lobbying efforts and huge amounts of disinformation and press work. The article continues:

“Its livestock sectors often suffer from poor husbandry, which leads to more prevalence of disease and a greater reliance on antibiotics”,

which we know is an issue.

“Whereas we have a ‘farm to fork’ approach to managing disease and contamination risk throughout the supply chain through good husbandry, the US is more inclined to simply treat contamination of its meat at the end with a chlorine or similar wash.”

The article continues:

“In the US, legislation on animal welfare is woefully deficient.”

That article was penned by the now Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, during the brief hiatus after he left the Government in February 2019. He immediately turned to The Guardian to make known his views on just how worried he was about US animal welfare.

[Mr Goodwill]

Does the hon. Lady understand that the US actually consumes most of its own beef? Only about 13.5% of its beef is exported, mainly to Japan and the far east. There is not a great stockpile of American beef looking for a market, either in the UK or the EU.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I am not sure that that is particularly relevant. At the moment there is a ban on hormone-pumped beef entering our markets. The UK is the third biggest market in the world for food imports. It is clear that if the doors were open, there would be a potential market here and the US would be very keen to get into it. Most of the discussion on trade deals so far has not been about the beef sector anyway.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge has already said, at about the time that the now Secretary of State wrote that article, he also tabled what are now new clauses 33, 34 and 35 to the then Agriculture Bill. Why would he do that? He had made the arguments in public. He did a sterling job trying to defend the Government’s position during the first sitting of the Agriculture Bill. He came across as reasonably sincere, but the moment he had the freedom to say what he really thought, he went to the press and wrote an article in The Guardian outlining clearly and eloquently what his concerns were. He did not seek verbal reassurances from the Government; he sought legislative reassurances. So if it is good enough for the Secretary of State when he is allowed free rein to say what he feels, I am sure the Minister can understand why many of her colleagues on the Conservative Back Benches and Opposition Members also agree with him.

Agriculture Bill (Tenth sitting)

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 10th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Ruth Jones]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Sir David. I am pleased to speak to these important amendments.

Over recent weeks, as we have worked our way through the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge and I have moved and spoken to a number of amendments, and I have noted not only the importance of this legislation, but the potential that accompanies it. As we approach this stage in our consideration of the Bill, it is time that we reminded ourselves of the motives and headlines around it.

Before she was sent to the Back Benches, the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), said that the Agriculture Bill

“will transform British farming, enabling a balance between food production and the environment which will safeguard our countryside and farming communities for the future.”

I am sure Members will agree that those are aspirational and noble aims—a vision that nobody could disagree with. I just wish that the content of the Bill matched the media lines published by officials at the Department. However, I say to the Minister that we can deliver that vision together on a cross-party basis if the Government accept our ideas, our advice and our suggestions. There is no better time to start doing so than now, by accepting amendments 77, 78 and 79.

The amendments reflect a great deal of interest from many of the relevant external bodies, and we have received many thoughtful and reflective commentaries from organisations including the National Farmers Union, the Tenant Farmers Association and Greener UK. I am grateful to them all for the hard work they are doing on behalf of their members and sectors, which includes a collective welcoming of the fact that fairness is required in the supply chain; we need to ensure that there is transparency and openness, too. The Bill is particularly weak in those areas.

The Government need to rethink and revisit the supply chain provisions designed to secure a fairer price to farmers for the food they produce. Those provisions have been broadened in this iteration of the Bill, but there is still no duty to use them, and the Government have not published anything about how they intend to use the powers and who would be enforcing, using and safeguarding them. Our amendments would provide some clarification on those questions.

We note that the NFU believes there should be an obligation on a Secretary of State to introduce regulations to ensure a baseline of fair dealings between business purchasers and producers across all sectors, and that those regulations should be brought forward within 12 months of the Bill’s coming into force. They are right to call for speedy implementation of the measures that would give effect to the fairness we all want, so I support those calls from the NFU.

We have heard from a number of stakeholders about the need for a strong and meaningful overarching body, and they are right. We need the Minister to provide some clarity about who that regulator will be, how it will work, and what it will look like. It is clear to us on the Labour Benches that the Government have a vital role to play, and our amendments will help ensure that this role is carried out. We should nail down today the fact that the regulator should be the Groceries Code Adjudicator. The Bill as it stands leaves hanging the question of who the regulator should be, and the last things anyone in the real world needs at this time are uncertainty, indecision and confusion.

The elephant in the room—we spoke earlier about one elephant in the room, but this is another elephant—is our departure from the European Union. There will soon be tough and competing demands on the Government for resources, focus, scrutiny and implementation, but I hope that in the weeks ahead, this Bill will receive the strong and guaranteed focus of Ministers on the Treasury Benches.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that there are some areas in the agricultural trade, such as the grain market, where there is no market failure? There are lots of buyers and lots of sellers in that area, and it operates very well.

[Ruth Jones]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Of course, he is an expert in this area and I bow to his superior knowledge, but what we are saying is that we need to clear the matter up for the whole industry, not just for certain sectors that already work well. However, I appreciate his intervention.

I hope that the amendments have shown the Government that there is widespread support for this action. They are about not partisan advantage, but clarity for the sector and an improved set of circumstances and conditions. I am proud to have tabled them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

Of course. Last week, we had an interesting discussion about labelling. I take Members back to that because on page 16 of the document is a theoretical discussion of the effect of labelling. The Government tell us:

“Tapping into the consumer willingness to pay begins with understanding the value-action gap”—

which I am sure is being discussed on every omnibus around the country—and that

“it is possible for someone to derive positive value from the fact that animals are being well cared for as a result of another’s purchasing decision. Those not buying animal products should be included in any assessment of public value, one person’s holding of this value does not detract from another’s.”

I find that a puzzling suggestion. I tried it out on my partner—I will not say what she said, but she was not convinced that, basically, other people buying poorly produced food somehow does not detract from the wider public good. That is a theoretical discussion the Government may want to go back to. The following page states:

“Addressing consumer understanding, and understanding how purchasing decisions are made in practice in the retail environment and online, are also key elements…It is important to note that improved transparency alone can only address information asymmetry, and does not capture the public value held by non-consumers.”

I am not sure what any of that means, and I am sure that the public have little idea of what it means. I think it shows that labelling is not simple; there is a big discussion to be had. Is it enough to use labelling? The right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby and I had an exchange on that last week; there are sincerely held differences of opinion about it.

Back in the simpler, empirical world, we have seen the positive impact that labelling can have on eggs. Since 2004, when EU law began to require eggs and egg packs to be labelled to highlight production method, there has been a considerable move in the market towards free-range eggs and away from caged egg sales. I am told that around 52% of all UK eggs come from cage-free systems, which is welcome.

It is not the same in other sectors. Consumers are still very much in the dark about the production of meat and milk. It is hard to find meat or dairy products that have a labelled method of production. For meat, there is some labelling of free range and organic, but not much else. There is even less information about the farming methods of milk. Most milk is pooled together, making it difficult to distinguish between pasture-based and intensively produced milk. From personal experience perusing the supermarket shelves, it seems the world is becoming more complicated these days; there is a greater range, but we need to go further. I find it confusing. It is confusing for consumers and it does a disservice to farmers who are already producing to higher standards but do not have any means of distinguishing their products because of labelling ambiguities.

A lot of marketing and packaging borders on the misleading. Intensively produced meat and dairy products, where animals may have seen very little of the outside world, are packaged in pretty green packets featuring rolling hills and what looks like a welfare-friendly world. That does not help consumers make informed choices, and it does not help producers extract the higher value that they deserve from their products. Proper labelling would work in everyone’s interests.

The production methods highlighted would differ for different products, but mandatory labelling could be used to indicate on the packet whether the product has been produced intensively indoors or extensively outdoors, with the full range of production methods in between, so that consumers can make a decision in the shop about what they want. That is something that the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee recommended twice to the Government in 2018, and it makes a lot of sense.

At the moment, any consumer demand for less intensively produced meat and dairy is impeded by the lack of clear information at the point of sale about how the products have been produced. Informing consumers about methods of production allows them to make that choice. We could see important shifts in the market towards the production of food that is less intensive, more environmentally sustainable and based on higher animal welfare.

A good labelling system could also play an important role in further incentivising farmers to take up environmental land management schemes and deliver the public goods that we discussed last week under clause 1, particularly those who seek to promote higher animal welfare measures, by giving them the recognition they deserve for using less intensive production methods. If the consumer has no idea what farmers are doing, it stands to reason that farmers will see the benefits of making positive changes only in the direct payments they receive, rather than in any changes in consumer demand. There needs to be a way for farmers to demonstrate that they are delivering food in a way that consumers may choose to pay for.

International debate is moving quickly in this area. We heard evidence of the number of schemes that are being looked into across Europe. The Government have talked big talk about using the new opportunity post Brexit to improve our animal welfare standards and modernise our farming processes. It is important that we do not miss key opportunities to adopt mechanisms that can help support that. A relatively simple change of wording would give this clause the strength it needs to deliver the Government’s aim of achieving an impact we all support.

[Mr Goodwill]

I note that the amendment would substitute “must” for “may” in subsection (1), but all the other subsections contain the word “may” too. Has not the hon. Gentleman made an omission by not seeking to insert “must” in all the others? Surely having “must” in subsection (1) would be completely counteracted by all the “may”s in the rest of the clause.

Agriculture Bill (Eighth sitting)

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 27th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Daniel Zeichner]

Welcome back, everybody. Our aim with this group of amendments is to highlight the need for financial assistance in clause 1 to be provided for the purpose of protecting or improving the health or welfare of livestock only if farmers go above and beyond current animal welfare standards.

I have already touched on this issue. We believe it is important to avoid a situation where public money is paid for current welfare standards being met. I think the public would find that curious, but it is a risk given the systems we have inherited. The nod of enthusiasm from the Minister confirms that the authors of the Bill rather agree, although we say that it is still not entirely clear. I think it is agreed that the taxpayer’s principal role should be to provide funding for public goods that the market cannot deliver or can deliver only partially, such as high environmental and animal welfare standards. The funds available should be used not for marginal welfare gains but to support best practice and farmers who are willing to go substantially beyond the legal minimum requirements.

Of course, there is a whole series of potential issues associated with that. How much improvement? Do we want to set standards to which we want people to move quickly? I am struck when I talk to people about this that I think the industry will do what it is asked to do. Clearly, however, if it is not directed and just responds to the market, people will produce to different price points. Again, that is an issue for the politicians to think about. We had a discussion the other day with the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby about whether labelling gets us there. There are different views, and this is our view.

There are clear ways of identifying significant steps up in welfare for different species of farm animals, and it is extremely important that we tailor our welfare standards appropriately to what would achieve those outcomes for each species. Let me make a few suggestions for the high standards we would like ultimately to be achieved across each sector.

For pigs, funding could be made available to farmers who achieve intact—neither docked nor bitten—tails. There are schemes along those lines in other countries. Getting pigs to slaughter with intact tails is recognised by the Farm Animal Welfare Committee as a good outcome-based indicator of high welfare. This morning, in our discussion of the environmental land management document—I am pleased to see it is now on the table for all to enjoy—we touched on whether payments should be for what is done or what is achieved. I think the debate about that is moving; many of us would like to see outcome-based payments. At least in this area, we can discuss the outcomes we are looking for, and I suggest they are more easily measured. I am told—we heard this from witnesses, too—that such schemes already exist in Germany.

As we outlined in a previous amendment, which sadly was not taken up by the Government, we believe that the Government should encourage a move to free farrowing systems. However, we acknowledge that there is extra cost involved and we believe some payments could be made to cover a proportion of the capital costs involved in making that change. It is a decision for us as a country, as well as for consumers, as to where we want to get to on these standards. This is a clear opportunity.

For laying hens, we would like to see funding made available for farmers who use the best free range systems, such as low stocking density, low flock size, mobile housing and provision of trees and bushes. Outcome measures that one could look at are not trimming hens’ beaks, achieving low mortality and good plumage scores. Such outcomes can be measured; that is a decision we could make. This Committee is a good place to have such discussions, which, over time, could attempt to lift welfare standards in this country.

For broiler chickens, the key issue is often substantial overcrowding. Many UK broilers are stocked at 38 kg per square metre. As chickens in the UK often weigh around 2.2 kg at slaughter, that means approximately 17 chickens are kept per square metre. Without going into the wider points, we know the British public want to see higher welfare standards and many would probably be shocked to see those conditions. As Government Members have pointed out, people want food at affordable prices. We agree with that, so there is a tension and a balance in this, but if one has £3 billion to spend, to some extent one has choices.

At such high densities, sadly broilers can have high levels of infectious pathogens, leg disorders, foot-pad dermatitis and mortality. We believe that to be granted financial assistance, the maximum permitted broiler stocking density could be reduced to a specific number. We have talked today about the long transition period, but on another day we will come to the more show-stopping amendment on standards elsewhere in the world. We have to make decisions about where we want to get to, and then make sure we do not disadvantage our producers.

Funding could support the use of slow-growing breeds and low stocking densities, as scientific research shows that these bring welfare benefits. As an outcome measure, receipt of funding could be contingent on achieving low foot-pad dermatitis scores, which could be measured at slaughter.

Moving to dairy cows, a key issue is those that are kept indoors. Around 20% of UK dairy cows are zero grazed—that is, they are kept indoors for all or nearly all of the year. Again, funding could be made available for farmers who keep their cows in pasture during the grass-growing season, except when the weather is too wet. Such schemes already exist in Sweden. Research shows that pasture-based cows have lower levels of lameness, hoof pathologies, hock lesions, mastitis and mortality than zero-grazed cows. A potential outcome-based funding opportunity could be made contingent on pasture-based farmers achieving low levels of lameness and mastitis. We believe grass-based beef and sheep farmers could receive support for achieving low levels of lameness and disease.

Different research projects sometimes produce different outcomes. It is vital to have effective research into the impact on animal welfare of highly intensive livestock farming. We need that to contribute to a better understanding of what can improve animal welfare above the baseline and what better welfare practices can be promoted within the public goods element of the Bill. Therefore, we will be tabling an amendment to include a requirement for the Secretary of State to promote the conduct of research into the impact of highly intensive livestock farming practices on animal welfare, which, I believe, would be welcomed by many constituents and citizens.

Labour has argued in the past—and we continue to make the case—for an independent animal welfare commissioner, who would keep track of the most up-to-date and evidence-based science on animal welfare, in order to inform and update policy. We think that would be beneficial. We have proposed it in the past and I hope it is something the Government might consider. I am not aware that the Government have indicated thus far that they might do that, but let us see.

We back the great sections of the British public who call for an end to the use of cages on our farms once and for all. The Bill represents a real opportunity for the Government to get behind that call, if they can put in place the financial support needed for farmers to move away from high-intensity farming methods towards those that are significantly more supportive of animal freedoms and welfare. The Bill lacks detail on how financial assistance for improved animal welfare should be used. I hope the Minister has given due consideration to the careful planning needed to ensure that those receiving money for the clause 1(1)(f) public good are truly rewarded for achieving significant evidence-based improvements in animal welfare above the norm. Amendment 42 provides that financial assistance for the purpose of protecting or improving the health or welfare of livestock would be given only if the recipient had exceeded a set of baseline regulatory standards, as established in new clause 9.

Amendment 4 provides an expanded alternative. We have a slight sense that the previous amendment may not be carried, so it is good to have a second string. It would put in place a provision that financial assistance would be provided for the public good of improving animal welfare and health only if the Secretary of State was satisfied that the recipient had gone beyond minimum requirements and followed a number of important measures to guarantee animal welfare, as set out in paragraphs (b) to (e). They include that the recipient has raised animals

“in such a way that enables them to carry out their natural behaviours”.

I suspect there would be considerable support for that among the wider public.

High animal welfare means taking into account scientific research that increasingly indicates that good animal welfare helps not only the prevention of suffering but the opportunity for animals to have positive experiences and exhibit their natural behaviours.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. Would he consider, as some animal welfare campaigners do, that natural behaviour would be to allow a cow to keep her calf with her for perhaps the first six months? It is quite difficult to be specific about what natural behaviour might be.

[Daniel Zeichner]

As ever, the right hon. Gentleman asks a probing question. I made the point earlier that there are many levels of welfare to which we can aspire. Some are even contentious, in the sense that not everything natural is necessarily something that we want to happen.

Responding to consumer demand is complicated. If consumers want the kind of standard of welfare that the right hon. Gentleman suggests, I would suggest that, in the business world, it is a good idea to give them what they want—normally the argument made by the other side—but that is costly. There is a dilemma, again, for this mythical £3 billion pot we are all busily spending—[Interruption.] Well, it may not be £3 billion, we will see. There is a dilemma about which sectors to support, which we will come back to, and what level of welfare is reasonable.

Beyond that, there is a further question. As the right hon. Gentleman suggested, there may be things that lift to a very high standard, but who makes that decision? I suspect that, as ever, there will be a spectrum. There can be very high standards, which we see with the plant-based milk alternatives people are choosing. I choose them in my office, because my colleague does not drink dairy milk. We pay a premium, but we are happy to pay that. Consumers should be given the choice. That would be the answer to his intervention.

Pigs need space; they need a quantity of bedding and materials to fill a range of species-specific behaviours, such as rooting, foraging, nesting and exploring. Providing fibrous materials, including straw, brown wood, mushroom compost or natural vegetation, assists with comfort and can reduce aggression. Similarly, systems for laying hens should allow for species-specific behaviours such as nesting, foraging, dust bathing, perching and exercise, including walking, running and brief bursts of flying.

--- Later in debate ---

The practice has been highly contentious for many years and we believe it should be ended once and for all. That would do a great amount of good and have only a limited impact on the industry, as only one British sheep in 300 is involved in such trade and only 1.5% of British calves were involved in the export trade for fattening in 2017.

[Mr Goodwill]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the reason we can discuss this practice is because we have left the European Union and have the freedom not to comply with single market rules?

[Daniel Zeichner]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, as he well knows. At the very least, it seems evident that those involved in the live export trade should not be receiving public subsidy for good animal welfare. There is probably widespread agreement on that. Having said all that, there need to be exceptions for genuine cross-border movements from Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland, provided that the animals involved are not re-exported from the Republic. We provide such an exemption in amendment 4.

Other requirements for receiving money for higher standards should include that livestock are not subjected to prohibited procedures such as mutilations, as defined in the Animal Welfare Act 2006, and that livestock are killed only in the controlled environment of a slaughterhouse unless a veterinary surgeon certifies it necessary due to the animal’s poor health, and the method of killing is humane. Amendment 5 provides definitions for the practices outlined in amendment 4.

[Mr Goodwill]

I will be brief. Under clause 1, which we discussed earlier in the week, the list of objectives for which financial assistance can be given includes, under subsection (1)(f),

“protecting or improving the health or welfare of livestock”.

Therefore, much of what the hon. Gentleman talks about is already covered in the Bill. While I can understand his wish to incentivise less tail docking and castration of pigs, reduce the density of broiler chickens and phase out farrowing crates, the intensive pig and poultry sectors have not received funding through the common agricultural policy system. My worry is that he is looking at ways of switching support from the farms that have relied on it —particularly extensive farms in the uplands, those farms that are producing the habitats and environmental public goods that we want to protect—to the intensive sector, which already manages very nicely. Switching to some of these more welfare-friendly methods on a large scale could mop up quite large amounts of the money available.

My second concern is about amendment 4’s proposed new subsection (4A)(d) to clause 2 of the Bill, which talks about killing livestock

“in any place other than in a slaughterhouse”.

I am a little worried about the practicalities of how that relates to sick and injured animals on farms. The amendment states that a veterinary surgeon must have certified that the animal should be put out of its misery because of poor health, and that

“the method of killing is humane”.

I read that to mean that on every occasion when a farmer wishes to humanely put an animal out of its pain or misery, they must be observed by a vet. In our village, I have a neighbour whose farm has 16,000 laying hens. It is an extensive system; they go outside. They are barn-raised hens produced under the very best welfare standards, but from time to time a hen will be injured or, in some cases, attacked by other hens and my neighbour will need to euthanise it. I do not think it is realistic or practical to expect that the farmer will call a veterinary surgeon on every occasion that happens and incur a fee of maybe £40 or £50.

Similarly, on my own farm, until last Saturday we had four hens. Unfortunately, a pet dog got into our field on Saturday afternoon and killed two of them, and when I went on Sunday morning to let the two remaining hens out of the shed, one of them was obviously in a very bad way. The tail feathers that we thought had been pulled out by the dog were hiding quite a nasty injury, and I had to kill that hen myself. It would not have been realistic for me to take that hen to the vet, or to call a vet out. There are many instances in which an animal is in great distress, maybe because it has a broken leg, and waiting for a vet to come would not be practical, even if it were economically feasible.

I hope the hon. Gentleman will understand if I do not support his amendment, because I do not think he has looked into the practicalities of animal welfare on a farm when animals are sick. I think back to when we used to keep a load of sheep. Sometimes sheep were in a very bad way; perhaps they had had difficult lambing and were haemorrhaging. This might be taking place at 2 o’clock in the morning, so the most humane thing to do was to put them out of their misery straightaway, without any delay and certainly without waiting for a vet to come, even if that were practical. If the hon. Gentleman wants to come back with similar amendments on Report, I hope he will look at paragraph (d) again, because most practising farmers would look at it and say, “This is not going to help animal welfare. This is going to mean animals dying in suffering, particularly if by breaking these rules I lose all my subsidies.” I think many farmers would be very worried about that, so I hope the hon. Gentleman understands the practicalities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

That was an interesting and illuminating discussion that, as ever, probably raised as many questions as it answered, sadly.

I will start with the points made by the sharp-eyed right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby. I am sorry to hear about his unfortunate incident with the dog at the weekend.

[Mr Goodwill]

It was our favourite.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am sorry to hear that. The right hon. Gentleman makes a serious point. I fully concede that this was not a drafting error; I am not sure we guided those doing the drafting in quite the right way. I accept that we could improve on that. What we are trying to tease out, however, relates to the questions and points that I have already raised about what the public want from the Bill. He implied that he was tempted to support one of the amendments. I would like to tempt him to support the other one, which does not have those objections attached to it, but I fear that I shall be disappointed.

We are pushing for a commitment to much higher standards. The Minister made a series of important points. On live animal export, we absolutely support using the opportunities available and we hope that the Government will get on with it. We would all like that to happen.

The point relates to some of the earlier tensions. I think the Minister said that there is no intention to pay for basic welfare standards, which I understand. Page 20 of the policy discussion document—I hate to keep referring to it, but it makes the point and has illuminated the discussion—asks what tier 1 could pay for and gives a wide range of examples. There is a tension between what she said and some of those examples, not least because what it could pay for depends on exactly what is being paid for on what unit. Farms are not all the same; some are mixed farms.

The cross-compliance regulations that we had under the European Union made it incumbent on the whole enterprise to conform to rules and regulations, but we do not know, frankly, how that will work in this new set-up and whether one part doing one thing disqualifies or qualifies. Those are exactly the reasons why we wanted a more detailed discussion, because we do not know the answers.

I understand the Minister’s predicament, but it is all very well for her to say, “Ah well, these things are difficult. It’s going to take time. The world’s going to change,” and all the rest of it, but it ain’t going to change for the people who are farming next year. They will have to deal with this, alongside the reductions that are coming, like the sword of Damocles over them, at an unspecified pace. I am afraid that I do not think that is good enough. We need to sort out some of the thinking behind it.

I hear the Minister’s point about the potential unintended consequences when one is trying to apply a measure to entire herds, but I am not convinced that it is impossible to frame it in such a way that we could do that and still insist on high welfare standards for public money. This is a matter of huge public interest, which is reflected in the amount of correspondence that most MPs get on the issue. If the Government want popular support for these policies, this is exactly the kind of amendment that they would do well to look at. On that basis, I will press the amendment to a vote.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Jones]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to amendments 49 and 50. Mindful of the Chair’s previous exhortations, I will not read out the amendments, but I remind colleagues that both amendments ensure that no financial assistance can be given for land that is to be or has been used for hunting, including exempt hunting, or on which an offence has been committed under the Hunting Act.

These are important amendments. I hope the Minister will think carefully about the need for us to show leadership and for this Parliament to pass legislation that is bold and strong and enshrines our values. Those values mean that I am especially pleased to speak to the amendments.

Colleagues on this side will not need to be reminded, but I want to reiterate to the Minister and her Back Benchers that Labour is the party of animal welfare. The Conservative party likes to talk about the last Labour Government—so do I: we should remember that, when in government, Labour brought forward the landmark and history-making Hunting Act 2004.

[Mr Goodwill]

Is the hon. Member talking about the most recent Labour Government or the actual last Labour Government?

[Ruth Jones]

I will pass on the semantics, but I thank the right hon. Gentleman.

The Conservative party has an appalling record on animal welfare in government. Announcements are often piecemeal, weak and kicked into the long grass when it comes to the advancement of animal welfare in every sense, including providing financial assistance for land on which hunting takes place.

Many colleagues have repeatedly raised concerns about the use of trail hunting as a cover for illegal hunting. The weight of evidence from independent monitors and non-governmental organisations shows that trail hunting is not a genuine activity. Indeed, a poll commissioned by the League Against Cruel Sports found that only one in six rural residents believes that hunting with dogs reflects countryside values; more than nine in 10 think that observing nature reflects true rural values.

The Bill needs to show that we care, that we will lead by example and that legislation made in this House is relevant and sensible. Wildlife crime continues to blight many of our rural and green spaces, and many animal species across the country. There can be little confidence on the Government Benches that wildlife crime is being tackled effectively when the National Wildlife Crime Unit now has only 12 members of staff: they are required to cover the entirety of its UK operations. We need to get our house in order, and provide adequate resources to ensure that we can enforce legislation.

I mentioned the successes of the last Labour Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Goodwill]

Again, I worry about the unintended consequences of the amendments that have been put forward for understandable and, for a large section of the community, well-meaning reasons. The explanatory statements say that the amendments,

“would provide that no financial assistance can be given for land which is to be, or has been, used for hunting (including exempt hunting), or on which an offence has been committed under the Hunting Act.”

When one interrogates section 2 of the Hunting Act 2004 and the exemptions listed in schedule 1 to find out what is defined as exempt hunting, one reads that that includes flushing using no more than two dogs, so that animals such as rabbits can be shot. In many cases, it says, that can be done to protect the biological diversity of an area or to obtain meat for human consumption.

My key concern is that there is a long list under exempt hunting—I am not talking about trail hunting—including using just one dog, whereas the Act refers only to using more than two dogs. Amendment 49 talks about using “a dog”. The hon. Member for Newport West can correct me if I am wrong, but from what I have read, if a terrier has killed a rat on a farm at any time since 2004, that farm will be exempt from getting any agricultural support. I would hazard a guess that that would cover at least 95% of the farmland in this country, if not 100%.

When the hon. Lady talked about land, she was not specific about whether she meant the bit of land where the offence may or may not have taken place, the entire farm or the land in the ownership of that particular farmer or landowner, or whether the exemption still applies if the land is sold or the tenant who controls that land gives in the tenancy and it goes to a new tenant. My worry is that the amendments leave us with more questions than answers. If they are taken at face value—the Minister is a lawyer, so she is good at taking things at face value—and adopted, we could end up with maybe 100% of land in this country being exempt from getting any support at all.

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[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Goodwill]

I will take the other intervention, which I suspect may be on the same subject, before I reply to them both, if I may.

[Alicia Kearns]

If this legislation is meant to be pragmatic —if it is there to support farmers and ensure they act in the right way to steward our environment and our communities—should we not therefore be doing pragmatic things, rather than virtue signalling? We should recognise that cats have every right to hunt down mice if that is what they want to do, and therefore restricting what farmers can do in this way is neither sensible nor the place of legislation; rather, it is the place of press releases.

[Mr Goodwill]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, which answers the shadow Minister’s point very well. He has talked about the will of the people: the will of the people was expressed on 12 December last year, when they elected a majority Conservative Government.

I conducted an extensive survey of my constituents prior to my election. We got about 20,000 replies to that questionnaire, which asked lots of questions, including one about hunting. The Whitby part of my constituency was about 60/40 in favour of hunting; in the Scarborough part, it was about 60/40 the other way. I went to a primary school not long before the election, and as we all do when we visit schools, I talked about the issues that the children wanted to talk about. Hunting did come up, and one child who came from a farming family made it very clear that she took a dim view of foxes, and the fact that they had been in her family’s hen coop and were taking newborn lambs. She underlined the need to control foxes.

We are not revisiting the hunting legislation in this Committee; rather, we are looking at what the practical implications would be if this amendment were on the face of the Bill, with its provisions being retrospective and applicable to exempt activities such as one dog killing one rat or two dogs being used to flush a rabbit to be shot. If those exemptions were removed, almost every farm in the country would be covered by that retrospective application.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I fully accept that we can always improve the drafting. What I am trying to get at is whether the right hon. Gentleman thinks that public money—taxpayers’ money—should be supporting hunting, in whatever form. We are trying to get at that to build on the landmark legislation that has been so popular. As we know, the Government are fairly reluctant to get back into this debate.

[Mr Goodwill]

My first point is that if the hon. Member for Newport West had drafted the amendment herself, she might have looked in a bit more detail at what schedule 1 of the Hunting Act 2004 actually says and what exemptions should be referred to, rather than making a general reference to exempt practices. We all rely on pressure groups and lobby groups to help with our work, but taking things at face value is not always the best way forward. Secondly, the objective of the Bill is not to support people killing rats with terriers, or people conducting legal activity within the context of the Hunting Act; it is to support our agricultural industry in a way that also achieves the green environmental objectives that we all want to meet.

The hon. Member for Cambridge will not be surprised to hear that I will not be supporting these amendments. Whether or not Members agree with hunting is almost beside the point, because the amendments are drafted in such a way as to destroy the objective of the Bill, which is to give support to farmers, particularly in some of the most challenging parts of our country—those areas where farming is most difficult to make economically attractive, where predation from foxes and rats are problems, and where other types of pest control need to be carried out. The exemptions within the Hunting Act exist to allow those legal activities to take place, and my guess is that using the amendments to take them out of that Act and make those farms exempt from support would take out nearly 100% of the farmland in the United Kingdom. Even farmers farming National Trust land where hunting is not allowed by the landlord will be carrying out rabbit and rat control, which is one of the exemptions that the hon. Member for Newport West is seeking to bring back in.

[Victoria Prentis]

Environmental land management will, as we said earlier, be most successful if the highest number of participants are enabled to join in. As my right hon. Friend has just made clear, I fear this amendment would limit uptake of our exciting new schemes, and therefore limit the environmental benefits that we all hope will flow from them. For example, under the suggested tiers 2 and 3 it will be vital for farmers and land managers to work together across a wide area, to deliver the environmental benefits we hope for, such as improving the status of habitats. Excluding some land from being eligible could prevent us from delivering those benefits.

I am concerned that the amendment might penalise legal activities. For example, exempt hunting is, by its nature, exempt from the Hunting Act 2004, and is a legal activity with clearly defined restrictions. No one should be penalised or have financial assistance withheld for carrying out or allowing lawful activities on their land.

Amendment 50 concerned me because it would exempt from financial assistance those on whose land hunting had been carried out without their knowledge. For example, hare coursing, which many hon. Members will have had difficulty with in their constituencies, is an offence under the Hunting Act, and is often undertaken without landowner or land manager consent, often by illegal trespassers.

I am also concerned that exempting land that has been used for hunting since February 2005, as my right hon. Friend said, including legal hunting activities, could mean that we are exempting financial assistance from being awarded to lawful landowners or managers, who had no control over what had happened on that land previously.

I hope I have made clear the difficulties in seeking to restrict financial assistance in such a way. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Newport West to withdraw the amendment.

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[Ruth Jones]

I thank hon. Members for their interventions and the Minister for her comments. I thank the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby for his advice about not taking things at face value. I promise him that I have spoken at length to farmers in my constituency about hunting, as well as pest control and vermin control, which are two very different things.

I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the potential unintended consequences of the amendments. We are willing to work with others in this room to ensure that the amendments are drafted soundly and safely, but we wish to put forward the basic spirit of the amendments today. He has gone to extremes by suggesting that no landowner in the country would ever get any money again. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton made the point about cats killing mice and rats. My cats killed mice and rats, but I am not seeking public money for public good. That is the difference.

[Mr Goodwill]

Cats are exempt from the Bill, so that would still be allowed.

[Ruth Jones]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that, but the point is, if one is not seeking public money for public good, it is not a problem.

We need to work together to ensure that these amendments come through. Everyone is aware of the pressure groups. There is the idea that hunting is a sport, and it has been taken up as a sport over hundreds of years. We, as a civilised society, should look to close that down. We have no problem with controlling vermin. The right hon. Gentleman made the point about foxes, which I completely understand, having had friends who have had chickens decimated by foxes, which, as he knows, do not eat them, but leave them.

We have no problems with controlling pests and vermin, but hunting is a massive game in the countryside and people do not want to see animals being put through this insecure and frightening sport. The evidence of the unintended consequences of hunting is clear: cats and dogs are killed as a result of trail hunting. It is important that we mitigate to stop that. While we are happy to work together on the wording of these amendments, it is important that we work together to ensure they are accepted. The spirit of them is very clear and I hope the Government will accept that.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

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I mention our membership of the European Union because when we were members the Government were required to follow the mechanism whereby the Council of Ministers signed off the budget. Crucially, that budget was reported to Members of this House and, importantly, our farmers and farming organisations across the United Kingdom. Much of Government Members’ reasoning for leaving the European Union was that it was about taking back control. We heard that mantra many times. It was about making decisions here in this place, removing the influence from afar and so on. The fact that the annual budget was determined by the Council of Ministers and reported shows that we did have influence, we did have a say and we were in the room. We cannot allow our departure to result in a backwards move on transparency, accountability and honouring our commitment to some of the most hard-working people in our economy.

[Mr Goodwill]

The hon. Lady refers to the EU budget. May I ask her how many times in the past 20 years it has actually been signed off?

[Ruth Jones]

Obviously, the right hon. Gentleman has far more technical knowledge than I do on the subject. I will not give a figure for fear of its being wrong. I accept that he has a lot more information. All I would say is that we were actually at the table and were part of discussions. We were not excluded; we were very much included. Even Margaret Thatcher agreed that we were part of those discussions, so I accept that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Prentis]

No.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 5 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 6 and 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 8

The agricultural transition period for England and the termination of relevant payments

[Mr Goodwill]

I beg to move amendment 9, in clause 8, page 8, line 5, after “extending” insert

“or pausing the transition process and”.

It is my pleasure to move this amendment, although I am hopeful that the Minister will be able to satisfy me that it is superfluous. As we have already heard, the Government’s plan is to switch over from the basic payment scheme, which pays farmers for being farmers, to a system of environmental land management that pays farmers for delivering public goods. That will be a seven-year graduated transition, which I hope will be smooth and go according to plan.

However, clause 8(3) allows a degree of flexibility if things do not go entirely according to plan. There are a number of reasons why that might happen—some within the Government’s control and some beyond their control. We have heard that the environmental land management pilots will be concluded by 2024. We have been slow getting started with those—partly because of the parliamentary inertia over the past three and a half years; I will not suggest who might be to blame for some of that—but we are now in a position where we can move forward. The British people have given us a majority and our marching orders, which are for a quick march towards the ambition of delivering these objectives for our farmers.

We may not have all the evidence we need to fully develop and deliver every aspect of environmental land management at the time we hope to start doing so. Therefore, this amendment will allow us to not waste public money on a scheme that has not been fully proven with the evidence, including scientific advice and ecological evidence, that we need. There may be some administrative glitches in the introduction of the new system; Governments do not have a good track record of delivering big IT systems on time—or, indeed, on budget. There may also be external factors relating to weather or disease and the impact they may have on farming, so it makes sense to have the flexibility that clause 8 allows for.

I hope the Minister can give me some clarity about how this may work in practice. If the process is to be extended and the seven-year transition ends up being, for example, a nine-year transition, will that take place in nine equal steps, or will we be able to—as my amendment allows for—pause the transition and start a little bit later? Could we stop the clock on the transition from BPS to ELM, and then resume after a one-year or two-year pause? I am sure that the Minister will be able to reassure me that that is perhaps not intended but allowed within the flexibility of the clause without my amendment. However, the reassurance would be very helpful to me, because I suspect that the existence of the clause in the Bill just might have something to do with the time that I spent at DEFRA last year.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I certainly would not want to intrude on a private argument on the Government side, but our view is that this is symptomatic of the problem of just how slow the process has been in coming forward. We have before us, of course, a Bill that has been delayed. The right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby made suggestions as to where the responsibility might lie, and we can all argue about that one. I suggest that there would have been a simple solution, but I am sure that he would not agree. The trouble is that a huge number of questions are left unanswered, as we have been highlighting throughout the day, and the suggestion that there might be further delay is cause for great concern.

It is worth highlighting what the National Farmers Union says:

“The NFU believes that with less than a year to go, time is rapidly running out for the government to have all of the necessary legislation and implementation decisions and process in place for this timescale. There are still many aspects of the transition and the successor future farming support policy which remain unclear and the concern is that there will be a ‘gap’ before alternative and effective schemes are in place and the start of the phasing out.”

As I think has become apparent in this Committee, we very much share those doubts: we have been talking about the reasons pretty much all day. We understand how ambitious many of the things that the Government are trying to do are. In the document to which we have been referring for much of the day, there are timelines, although I have to say that they are a bit like Mr Barnier’s account of the trade position of various countries. The timelines are not entirely clear in terms of where we are likely to be at a particular point.

We would be worried about a further pause, because as I have said we just cannot afford it. We are in a climate and ecological emergency. There is no pause button there. The Bill has already been delayed. If we are to reach net zero more quickly than 2050—my suspicion is that the Government would like to do so, although that date is what they are committed to—we will have to move more quickly, so any pause or delay to a more sustainable and environmentally supportive system of land management is disappointing.

We recognise the delicate balance, because if what we are discussing proves as difficult as I am suggesting it might be, there is then a dilemma for the Government. One of the gaps in the explanations today has been about the period, probably post 2024, as we go through the next part. It is one thing to do tests and trials and then to move to a national pilot, but to then move it on to a national scale is challenging, for many of the reasons to which I have referred.

We would want to go more quickly—[Interruption.] The Minister enjoys the fact that I am in the privileged position of being able to say that in opposition, but basically this entire institution should be bending itself, at every opportunity, to find ways of moving more quickly to challenge the climate crisis. That is what we would be doing.

The Bill needs to be stronger and quicker. We need the clearer targets. I am therefore inclined not to support the amendment. I think the message that needs to go out after today’s discussions is that we need much more clarity, and providing more clarity would actually help the Government to achieve what we all want, which is to move to a new system more quickly and more efficiently and ensure that it works for all those in rural communities.

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[Victoria Prentis]

That is why we are going slowly, or relatively slowly. That is why we have a seven-year transition period. I refer the hon. Gentleman to the back page of his favourite document and the policy document published on Tuesday, which gives an indication of the likely timeline. It is important that we retain some flexibility.

We have included in the Bill the ability to set reductions at an appropriate rate during the transition and, if circumstances deem it necessary, to extend the transition. I ask my right hon. Friend to withdraw amendment 9.

[Mr Goodwill]

I am conscious that I have broken my golden rule of not intruding on my successor’s policy areas for at least 12 months after leaving a Department, but we must thank the usual channels for the fact that I am here and able to participate.

I thought it a little ironic for the Opposition to be criticising us for the delay, given that they are, by and large, the architect of that delay—together with some of my former colleagues, who have sadly departed this parish following the general election. I have heard the Minister’s comments. I do not think my amendment will be necessary to maintain the flexibility I wish to see. She has reassured me in that regard.

The Minister has also underlined the fact that we already have very good stewardship schemes in operation, so it is not a case of having to wait for better environmental objectives to be met: we already have schemes in place that are delivering on a day-to-day basis. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(James Morris.)

Agriculture Bill (Seventh sitting)

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 27th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend is entirely right, and I will say more about that, as she can imagine.

This discussion is hugely important, and I hope that we will be able to give it the attention it deserves. As my hon. Friend said, the document was delayed until half an hour after the Committee had started our sitting, although I am grateful to Ministers for having the grace to look a little sheepish and to be apologetic—not their fault, I suspect. Frankly, however, it was a poor way to behave, although ironically the desired outcome was not achieved—for reasons that I am not entirely au fait with, the Secretary of State went to the NFU the day after anyway, and I understand that he had a fairly traditional welcome. It is not unusual for Ministers to go to industry events and get a bit of a roasting. I am opposed to all forms of cruelty—we will come to that later—but he clearly had a tough day.

More importantly, I fear that this has skewed the way in which we are discussing the Bill. Had we had the document in advance, we would have framed a different set of amendments to the key clause 1. I am grateful to you, Mr Stringer, and to Sir David for exercising discretion, which allowed us to table amendments to clause 2. That would not normally have been possible within the timescale. I put on record my thanks to the hard-working staff in our offices, who were up until late at night working on that, and to the Clerks, who were also up late working on potential amendments. People were under considerable pressure, and I hope to do justice to their work this morning.

I have to say that something made me cross and, when I came to read the environmental land management policy discussion document that we are talking about, at times it made me even crosser. It is a mixed bag. Some of it is excellent, and we will be supportive, but my overriding impression was that, despite detecting some extremely hard work and thought put in by officials, they had been hampered by some basic contradictions in the Government’s thinking. That is a political failing—not a policy failing—which I suspect partly reflects changes in personnel and thinking over time. The original architects—the unrepentant sinners to whom I referred on Tuesday—have moved on, and others have been left to figure out how to make a complicated set of ambitions work.

The thing that made me cross—we do not have to read far—is virtually in the opening line, although I understand that the prefaces to such documents are often bolted on at the end, possibly by eager-to-please special advisers. I will read the opening sentence:

“For more than forty years, the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy…has dictated how we farm our land”.

“Dictated”—think about that sentence. We were members of the European Union of our own free will—[Interruption.] I do not want to go over old ground, but I invite people to think about how that reads to those who might not share in support for the current situation, which is possibly half the country. It is a poor way to start the document.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

As a farmer, I can only describe the three-crop rule as dictating what I can grow on my farm. I cannot see any other interpretation.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I am sure we will have a to and fro this morning. We will come to the three-crop rule later. I have a suggestion for a more conciliatory word: “framed” is a more accurate term, frankly. “Dictated” is highly contentious and in some ways designed to rile, and I can say to whomever did that, it succeeded. Some of us take exception to the idea that the Government of our country seems to have become a Vote Leave franchise operation.

To add evidence, I have a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs press release from 2013, when the then Farming Minister—different context, different time, obviously—who is now the Secretary of State, told us:

“The UK ensured that we have choices in how we implement the Common Agricultural Policy, rather than having to work with a one-size-fits-all approach from the European Commission…This gives us the flexibility to target funding in ways that will deliver real benefits to the environment, boost the competitiveness of our farming industry and grow the rural economy.”

I actually agree with him, but it does not sound like the policy has been “dictated” to us. I make a gentle plea to the Minister to change that one word, which might help people to be brought together.

Now that I have got that off my chest, we can move on to the substance of my argument. To be fair, there is something much more welcome a few lines later in the document, although it is not entirely reflected in the body of the document. It talks about the new system making it

“possible to meet the objectives of protecting the environment and producing food.”

That is a significant discussion within the document, and I will come back to that point. I appreciate that this is a framework Bill—as the Government constantly tell us—but there needs to be scrutiny as the framework is fleshed out. That is what we seek to do with our amendments.

As I will show in the next few minutes, these are complicated, interesting and important issues, which need scrutiny. I hope the Government will see sense and merit in our proposal. I hope the excellent Government Whip might consider allowing his side a little leeway, as we have considerable expertise present on the Government Benches today. Although he was gloriously successful in ensuring that people did not make contributions earlier in the process, it would be helpful if a little leeway could be shown at this point in our discussions on the Bill, because we are now getting into the real meat of it.

Some Members will have attended Second Reading of the Environment Bill yesterday. The interaction between these various Bills is really important, as was mentioned by the Chair of Select Committee on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). I think many of us have come to the same conclusion. As so often happens, the debate yesterday strayed into the Agriculture Bill by mistake at one or two points. That is no surprise, because the Bill is important.

There are number of puzzles and contradictions in the policy discussion document that are worthy of discussion. I will come to some of the positive aspects, but one or two sentences jumped out at me. On page 6 —I suspect this is by the same author who wrote the opening remarks to which I referred—there is a sort of eulogy to our wonderful system at the moment. The document quite rightly praises our farmers for the wonderful things they do. However, one of them is

“supporting our supply of clean water”.

I think that will jar slightly, particularly with some of the water companies, which know that one of the unintended consequences of our current agricultural system is that they, and as a consequence all our constituents, have to pay considerable costs to clean up some of the water. Obviously, the hope is that our new system will have ways to deal with that.

Later in the document there are some very positive proposals, but there are also some big unanswered questions about the interaction between the documents. Again, that point was raised yesterday in the discussion on the Environment Bill. This is a particularly pressing issue, given our current situation with flooding in this country. Some things look in danger of falling between the cracks, particularly overall land use policy. Our amendment is designed to allow proper scrutiny of how the proposals will be developed. Given that this is a very long-term set of pilots in development, things will change and lessons will be learned. Having proper parliamentary scrutiny seems to be well worth while.

The document—as I said, I suspect it had various authors—is littered with problems and quite a few internal contradictions. On page 7, there is a hopeful claim that environmental land management schemes will

“help us maintain our food security.”

That feels as though it is a bolted-on, pious hope, given the tension between environmental goods, which we all support, and food production. Indeed, in the list of public goods on page 7 there is no mention of food. There are some non-sequiturs here, although if I were to be generous, the fact that some of these problems have not been entirely reconciled may explain some of the delay in producing the document.

It actually gets worse. On page 7, at the end of the introduction, it says that the goal is to “improve” existing standards, but later in the same sentence it says it is to possibly maintain them. This is one of the key conundrums of the legislation—what are we actually supporting? The document goes on to say a bit more about that, which I will come to later.

The key issue is whether we should support people who have already made improvements to get to a high standard or target resources on lifting others. That is an important and difficult point—we could call it additionality, if we want to get into jargon—but it is a profound issue. Page 8 defines two strategic aims. I do not have any issue with them, but there is no strategic aim for food production, so this running internal contradiction continues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move amendment 48, in clause 2, page 3, line 30, at end insert—

“(3A) Financial assistance allocated to a scheme in a particular year but not spent within that year may be carried over to a future year for spending on one or more schemes.”

This amendment would enable Ministers to “carry over” any monies left unspent at the end of a particular budget year for spending in subsequent years.

This is a more probing amendment and one that we do not intend to put to a vote, so hon. Members can be at ease. Mr Stringer, you will be pleased to hear that I will not read out the amendment.

I may have misunderstood how DEFRA’s economics works, and I am ready to stand corrected. The Government have not put it in legislation but have indicated that the money will be available for the remainder of the Parliament. If not all that money is used in one year, what happens to it? All I am looking for is some explanation, as the amendment suggests, that it would be possible to carry over money into subsequent years. That point has been raised on a number of occasions by a number of people, and there may be a simple explanation.

When debating the statutory instrument on Monday and looking back at our old friend regulation 1307/2013, it struck me that the current system has quite complicated reserves that the CAP specifies for dealing with some issues around fines, compliance and so on. It goes into considerable detail about how that should work. A similar system may be envisaged for us. I asked some questions about the issue during the debate on the statutory instrument, so perhaps when there is a reply there will be some clarity.

Again, it has been said that this is a framework Bill. That is fine—we get that. But this is the opportunity for Parliament to ask these questions. The headline figure of money is a concern to some in rural communities, and it may not be available if is not within the right timeframe. I suppose I have a simple question.

[Mr Goodwill]

Is the hon. Gentleman talking about money allocated to a scheme in general that is then not used, or money allocated to a farm that is not used due to some situation on that farm? Is he talking about the specifics of money allocated to farms or the generality of money allocated to a scheme?

[Daniel Zeichner]

That is a good point. Some of this discussion has conflated the two things, which may not be helpful for people. Actually, no money is allocated nationally. It is a political promise; it is not in legislation. Of course, no Parliament can bind future spending allocations. We will watch with interest what happens in the coming weeks, but the political promise has been given.

In answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s question, we are thinking of the headline figure. We hope that the £3 billion will be available each year for the next five years, as the Government have promised. Again—I am sorry to sound like a broken record—this is a key question: if the uptake of applications is not high enough, the money will not be drawn down, as far as I can see. As I said earlier, that could be a tempting position for any future Chancellor of the Exchequer.

[Mr Goodwill]

Is that issue not covered by clause 8, which allows for the extension of the scheme? When I come to discuss my amendment 9, we can explore the matter. One could possibly freeze the switch from the basic payment scheme to ELM schemes. I guess that the hon. Gentleman is discussing the situation in which the uptake of ELMS is not very high, because we are fairly sure that the uptake of the BPS will be pretty much 100%. Is this not already covered in that clause of the Bill?

[Daniel Zeichner]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but I am not sure that the issue is covered; that is why I am seeking clarification. I am afraid these points are about a lack of certainty. We are looking ahead a long way—seven years, potentially—for the transition. We have some clarity on the 5% plus, capping and so on for the next year, but beyond that —I hate to go back to the ELMS document, but there are timelines in there—some of it looks a touch optimistic, frankly.

Given that the process was begun 18 months ago, I hope that it will become clearer through the trials and tests, but we would like to pin down the finances. That is what we are trying to achieve through the amendment. I understand why Government Ministers cannot concede, but I suspect that, as people look more closely, quite a lot of them would agree with this position; if we are going to embark on these ambitious environmental schemes, as we want to, we want as much money as possible to be drawn from the Treasury. It is a very unusual situation, politically, to have a pot of money that looks like it has been allocated before. Where does it go in the future? That is what we are trying to pin down.

Agriculture Bill (Sixth sitting)

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Daniel Zeichner]

Amendment 40 relates to clause 1(1)(f), on

“protecting or improving the health or welfare of livestock”,

and would ensure that farmers receive financial assistance to improve the standard of accommodation for farrowing sows. New clause 12 and amendment 41 would end the use of sow farrowing crates, subject to delayed commencement at the discretion of the Secretary of State. The provision in clause 53 means that the ban outlined in new clause 12 would not come into effect immediately when the Bill becomes an Act, but on such day that the Secretary of State makes a statutory instrument to that effect.

That is all totally incomprehensible to most people, but, taken together, the amendments and the new clause would allow for a phasing out of farrowing stalls and make available resources and finance to support farmers with the capital costs of that process, as well as those who take interim measures to improve the conditions of farrowing sows. I suspect there will be widespread support for that aim, but I fully appreciate that this is a contentious subject that has been well rehearsed on other occasions. The public take the issue seriously and we would all like it to be achieved over time. As I have said on many occasions, it is a question of ensuring that the resource is available for people to make changes and to not be disadvantaged by competition elsewhere.

To give some background, although sow stalls that kept pigs caged for the entirety of their pregnancy were banned by Labour in 1999, it is still permitted for female pigs to be kept in farrowing stalls for seven days before they give birth and until the piglets are weaned. That can result in sows being caged for up to five weeks at a time. If they farrow twice a year, that means that they spend up to three months a year in an extremely restricted space. It may be called a crate or a stall, but it is effectively a cage. The crate length is such that the sow is only able to lie down or stand up. The standards state that the space should not allow excessive free movement. Before anyone jumps in, I will come to the reasons for that in a moment.

The sow is often completely unable to turn around. She can scarcely take a step forwards or backwards, and she cannot reach the piglets placed next to her for suckling. I am told that 60% of the 350,000 to 400,000 sows in Britain are kept in such crates to give birth. We know that keeping pigs caged in that way causes distress and leads to repeated bar biting, and it limits the pig’s ability to exhibit important natural behaviours, such as nest building.

Trapping the animal in that way also creates a breeding ground for diseases. E. coli in newly born piglets often presents in conditions where the mothers have been moved into farrowing crates to give birth and suckle their young. We know that is not done out of cruelty; it is done because keeping a mother restrained prevents the death of piglets by accidental crushing. We would argue that that in itself is a direct consequence of high-intensity farming techniques. In normal conditions, in the wild, the mother pigs would make effective nests and have the space to keep the piglets safe.

As with so much in this area, the research is contested, but robust studies suggest that there is clear evidence of a significant difference between the mortality rates of piglets reared in crated systems and those reared in loose housed systems. There are also other systems, which I shall come on to. The individual farrowing arks or huts used in the outdoor systems of organic farming are deep bedded with straw. There are many examples across eastern England.

Although piglet morality rates can increase in extremely cold and wet weather, UK figures show that outdoor systems can rear largely the same number of piglets as farrowing crates. Good production figures have also been attained from the so-called Swedish group system, where each sow has her own box to farrow in and can leave her piglets and carry out normal activity.

We contend that there are alternatives, though we fully appreciate that they are more expensive. The industry rightly points out that consumers buy at different price points and that producers respond to that demand. We understand the economics but, as I said earlier, this is an opportunity to use public money for public good.

This issue has been debated many times in this place over the past 20 years. We rightly pride ourselves on pursuing higher animal welfare standards, but other countries are already ahead of us and have moved on to alternative systems. I am told that Norway, Sweden and Switzerland have already banned farrowing crates and that free farrowing systems are being developed in other European countries, particularly Denmark and the Netherlands.

In response to animal welfare concerns, the Soil Association and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals already prohibit the use of farrowing crates under their labelling systems. This is another example of this country’s multi-tiered system of food production, with food being produced at different prices for the consumer. The question is how we can lift standards while protecting the interests of farmers by making it economically viable.

Back in 2015, the Farm Animal Welfare Committee’s report on free farrowing systems recommended taking action to encourage the replacement of farrowing crates, and called for the adoption of free farrowing systems to be reviewed in five years. Well, 2015 plus five is 2020—it is five years later. We contend that the Bill is the perfect opportunity for the Minister to make it clear that financial support for higher animal welfare includes specific provisions for farrowing sows in relation to such crates.

We recognise that it would be a challenge for the industry. As I have said, a ban would need to be phased in with financial support, which is what the amendment would provide for. Back in 1999, when sow stalls were rightly banned by the Labour Government, it is undeniable that that had an impact on the domestic pig industry. We contend that Government support for alternative systems is vital to encourage a switch, while protecting the UK pig sector.

The flipside, of course—this will be a repeated refrain—is that we have to ensure that any home production of pigmeat to higher welfare standards is not simply replaced by imports produced in other countries that continue to use such stalls. It is important that we protect all our animal welfare standards, and that in upcoming trade deals we do not sell out our farmers by allowing lower-standard imports. We will insist on provisions being added to the Bill to guarantee that, and will seek to amend it later to guarantee against that danger. In the meantime, we urge the Minister to consider this important clarification to the Bill to allow financial support to improve pig welfare, specifically in relation to such restrictive crates.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

I would not argue with anything the hon. Member has said. We all wish to have the very best welfare standards for pigs in this country. Indeed, the Red Tractor label assures customers that very high standards are being met. My only slight caution is that history might repeat itself, and the law of unintended consequences may come into play. Members may well recall that when veal crates were banned in the UK, the result was that calves were flown to Holland and elsewhere to be turned into veal under the very systems that we wanted to ban. Owing to single market rules, we could not ban that movement.

Similarly, when dry sow stalls were banned in 1999, there was an erosion of the British pig market, particularly by such countries as Denmark and Holland where dry sow stalls were still being used. Indeed, most of the EU still allows dry sow stalls from up to four weeks after service to birth, when in some cases they may be put into farrowing crates as well.

My concern is that, were we to act unilaterally through legislation, we could end up having more pigs coming into the country as imports. It is all very well saying, “Let’s ban the importation of pig products not produced to our high standards.” It would be very difficult to ban imports from the European Union given the degree of reliance on that market and the cross-border trade in pig products. The different parts of the carcase that are consumed in the UK and in Europe mean that there is a vibrant market in different cuts of meat, to meet those particular markets. Were that to be destroyed or undermined, it would cause great problems for the British pig industry.

Of course, if we had more pigs coming into the country from abroad, that would mean more castrated pigs. In the UK, only 2% of pigs are castrated. In Sweden, the figure is 94%, in Denmark 95%, the Netherlands 20%, Germany 80%, and Spain 20%. It could, in effect, result in more pigs coming on to our supermarket shelves and into our restaurants and cafés produced under systems that we do not wish to see in this country. Surely the answer is not legislation, but better consumer awareness of those production methods, better labelling, and better understanding of the labelling systems, so that supermarkets and customers, who would be enlightened, can do what we did regarding battery cages, which was to get people on to free-range eggs not through banning batteries but by consumers understanding that it is right to make choices based on animal welfare.

Although I agree with what the hon. Member for Cambridge said about trying to improve standards, I note that he made the slight caveat that at certain times of the year, particularly at the moment, some of our outdoor farrowing systems result in quite high piglet mortality. I have seen piglets trampled into the mud in the quagmires in outdoor systems. That aside, we should look at how we can move the industry into a better place, particularly in terms of farrowing crates, but without allowing our market to be eroded by other countries, particularly in the European Union, that do not have the same high welfare standards as us. I would not like to see history repeating itself in terms of what happened with veal crates and dry sow stalls in 1999.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to the Minister for her response. I will not withdraw the amendment.

In a way, the Minister conceded something important—that clause 1(1)(f) shows that resources can be used, which I am sure will be welcome to some. However, the clause also points to some of the general difficulties in the Bill. The pig sector benefits only indirectly from support under the current system. The clause rather suggests that money will be moved around the system, and I wonder whether everyone is aware that there will be winners and losers as a result. As we all know, one generally hears from the losers, not the winners, but that is a problem for the Government, not me. I am pleased about that concession, but I do not quite see why the Government could not actually do themselves some extra good by making the positive benefits specific, as we suggest. I encourage them to do that.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby. I was chided by one or two of my colleagues for agreeing with him too much earlier, but I disagree with him robustly now, in a civilised way. He makes an important point about where responsibility for these decisions should lie. We have been trying with labelling over many years, and he is right that it has proven more successful in some areas than others.

However—this is probably a fundamental philosophical division between us—I think that putting the onus of responsibility on individual consumers is problematic, not least because, as we heard the evidence sessions and in written evidence, it is pretty clear that many people subscribe to notions of higher standards until they get into a supermarket and are confronted with price differences. I suspect that many of us in this room are now in the fortunate position of being able to make an informed choice and not worry so much about the price, but for vast numbers of our fellow citizens, price is still a key driver. For many people who would probably like to support higher standards, if the price is too high, they have no choice.

We want not to take that responsibility away from people, but as with so many other things, to make it easier for them to make the right choice; in other words, to exclude the low-cost alternatives. I am not an economist—it was suggested earlier that I might be, about which I am partly flattered and partly not flattered—but there is clear evidence that, if standards are lifted, industries respond and prices begin to settle. This is a case of needing leadership. We have done it before. There are consequences, but we have public money to spend, and it could well be that the public would actually be very happy that we offered this kind of support, which would to some extent get them out of that price dilemma.

It is a bit like the dilemma around the smoking ban. I lost track of the number of smokers who told me that they were delighted that, basically, the ban made it easier for them to give up smoking, because the Government had intervened. That was during the last Labour Government, and I remember Tony Blair being very nervous about suggestions that he had offloaded responsibility on to local councils, which did not go down well. In the end, it needed cross-party leadership—it has to be something supported across the House—to make it easier for people to make the right choice. It is a judgment call.

[Mr Goodwill]

In many ways, the hon. Gentleman is enlarging on my argument, given that when we banned dry sow stalls consumers chose to buy the cheaper pork and bacon produced in Holland and Denmark, where a was not in place. It made the problem worse in many ways because those consumers made those choices.

[Daniel Zeichner]

The right hon. Gentleman is making my life much more difficult and I am going to have to be horrid to him again. Yes, in one sense, he is correct, but that is the challenge. Throughout this, if we do not find ways, whether in trade agreements or whatever, to protect—and it is protect—our higher standards against lower standards, we are lost entirely. That will be a recurring theme throughout this debate. I do not think it is beyond the wit of hon. Members to find a way of doing that. The right hon. Gentleman may disagree with me, and that will probably be a fundamental point of difference.

I have two final points to make: first, I do not think it is fair to offload the responsibility entirely on to consumers. We should take the lead. Secondly, we need to take the lead on making sure that we can protect our higher standards. That would attract considerable support across the House.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

Division 7

Ayes: 6

---

Labour: 6

Noes: 10

---

Conservative: 10

[Mr Goodwill]

I beg to move amendment 8, in clause 1, page 3, line 13, after “kept” insert “or managed”.

In clause 1(1)(d), reference is made to

“managing land, water or livestock”.

The amendment would change a reference later in the same clause to keeping, not managing, creatures. My worry is that relying on the word “kept” may exclude some of the most environmentally beneficial land uses, where birds or mammals are to a greater or lesser extent wild and thus, by definition, not kept.

I have a number of examples, such as the Chillingham wild cattle in Northumberland. The herd, of about 100, has not been touched by human hand or been seen by a vet for more than a century. They are certainly not kept, but the environment at Chillingham Castle is managed for the benefit of the many species and birds that thrive there.

Wild ponies also carry out important land management tasks. I have had ponies on my own farm from the Yorkshire Exmoor Pony Trust for a while; they carry out a great role in managing the land. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I have done in previous sittings—I am a family farmer myself.

Most importantly, we should recognise the importance of game as an integral part of many rural economies and ecosystems. Some species, such as pheasant, may well be kept for part of their life, when they are reared in captivity, but once released, they become free to range far and wide. Many shoots—I would suggest the more enlightened ones—do not artificially rear birds and strive to create the conditions for wild birds to breed. Those birds are never kept, but the management of the necessary ecosystem and environment would certainly not be in conflict with the wider public goods we seek to create, using this Bill as a tool.

The same argument must certainly apply to grouse, which cannot be reared in captivity. Managing moorland for the benefit of grouse not only favours other ground-nesting birds, such as golden plover and lapwing, but also the sustainability of sheep farming on our grouse uplands. They can only go hand in hand together if the moor is managed correctly.

According to the BBC “Countryfile” website, the UK’s deer population is at its highest level for 1,000 years, at around 2 million deer of the various species. Numbers have doubled since 1999. That has an impact on crops, wildlife and, in particular, forestry. The Forestry Commission estimates that the damage to plantations and commercial woodlands in Scotland amounts to £4.5 million per annum. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals estimates that around 350,000 deer are culled each year. In the absence of natural predators such as lynx and wolves, culling has to be carried out to maintain a stable population and prevent damage. In the main, those deer are not kept, but managed, and they may range over more than one landowner’s property. Deer management is vital to meeting our objectives.

There was some confusion during the evidence sessions about whether game was within the scope of the Bill. I would argue that it is vital that the definition of livestock in the Bill must include game species, which produce some of the most sustainable and healthy food available to consumers. The amendment would clarify that, to encompass not only creatures that are “kept” in the strict definition of controlling virtually every aspect of an animal or bird’s existence, but the production of healthy and sustainable game products in an environment that is managed to produce many of the public goods that we wish to reward, and sustained economically by the income from that game.

Of course, I strongly criticise the situation that we have read about in the press where game is dumped and not eaten. In some cases, I understand that game had been breasted, so the breast meat had been removed, but from an environmental perspective and from a food waste perspective that is not an acceptable practice, and I would criticise it. We need more promotion of the healthy game produced in our country, and we need more websites, such as the one that my son went on recently—I think the wives of the people on small shoots got sick of plucking and drawing pheasants, and made the game available free of charge locally. That is just the sort of website that we want. I also pay tribute to YouTube, which has some excellent opportunities for people to learn how to skin rabbits and prepare game in their own kitchens.

I hope that the Minister will recognise what I have said, and reassure me that the amendment may be withdrawn. I look forward to hearing that game is food and should be within the scope of the Bill.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I was intrigued to discover the direction in which the amendment would take us; I probably should have known in advance. It gives me an opportunity to have a genuine disagreement with the right hon. Member, because I think many of our constituents would be astonished at the idea of sporting shooting being considered a public good, in terms of putting public money in, although I recognise that for some Members that would be legitimate.

Again, it points to the whole new world that has been opened up by taking the pot of money that used to go directly to farmers based on area. We are now facing up to some really quite hard decisions about the kind of world in which we want to live. I have to say to the right hon. Member that for many constituents, I suspect in my seat and many others, it would not seem an appropriate use of public money. Although that may cause disagreement, that is what we are here to resolve. I do not think that the Opposition will be able to support the amendment.

[Victoria Prentis]

I thank my predecessor and right hon. Friend for his amendment. I believe that he wishes to ensure that we are being comprehensive in our coverage of the word “livestock” in clause 1. I, too, am keen to ensure that we cover everything that we need to in the Bill.

Good management of livestock is a key part of delivering the public goods that we want to support in our future agricultural policy. That, of course, is reflected by the purposes listed in clause 1. Under subsection 1(f), the Secretary of State will be able to support action to improve animal health and welfare, reduce endemic disease and keep livestock well maintained and healthy. The plan is that not only will that deliver better animal health and welfare, which itself can be considered a public good, but through addressing endemic disease we can also deliver other public goods, such as lower antibiotic use and lower greenhouse gases, due to less intensive livestock production.

Subsection 1(g) will enable us to provide financial assistance for measures to support the conservation and maintenance of UK native genetic resources relating to both rare breed livestock and equines, into which category I suspect Chillingham cattle very firmly fall, and indeed Exmoor ponies, whether or not they are to be found in Yorkshire—that confused me somewhat, but there we are. The measures could be used to incentivise farmers to rear rare and native breeds and species. That is undoubtedly, to my mind, a public good and the sort of thing that we are trying to achieve.

Game such as wild pheasants and partridges, while kept in captivity, would come within the definition of livestock and could be eligible for support, where they are kept for one of the purposes mentioned in clause 1 and its definitions of livestock. As my right hon. Friend said, grouse are not reared in captivity, so I cannot see how they would be covered. However, once the birds are no longer in captivity, following their release into the wild, they are classed as game. Therefore, it would not be appropriate to class them as farm poultry or livestock.

That legal position is supported by the definitions used in animal disease control legislation and the Game Acts. Farmers, after all, cannot be considered responsible for birds that have been released into the wild.

[Mr Goodwill]

No one is suggesting that the game themselves should be subject to support in terms of subsidies or any other means of support that the Bill would lay out, but the environment that they inhabit would certainly be a public good. My amendment seeks to ensure that, where public money is going to support those environments, which may support sheep, game and other wildlife, the fact that game is being produced as a business should not exclude it.

[Victoria Prentis]

Forgive me, Sir David, I am a humble lawyer trying to define the word “livestock” rather than a farmer of great experience, such as my right hon. Friend, who is trying to go further. I am keen to define livestock according to what is set out in the Bill. The definition of livestock in clause 1 has its roots in the Agriculture Act 1947, which was the last major piece of agricultural legislation that this House decided. This definition has been used in more modern legislation, such as the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 and the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995.

Agriculture has, of course, changed since 1947. Because of that we have made the amendment to the definition of livestock to include additional products, such as fibres and oils, and have recognised the importance of the production of milk from livestock. That ensures that we cover all aspects of livestock production that I can think of.

The current definition refers to livestock that is kept. We do not see that the amendment would enhance that definition. I hope that I have done my best, despite my legal background, to assure hon. Members that the current definition of livestock ensures financial assistance can be given for the important purposes set out in clause 1.

If the land that my right hon. Friend has in mind comes within another of the purposes in clause 1, applications can be made for financial assistance for many other reasons. I, therefore, ask my right hon. Friend to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Goodwill]

I thank the Minister for her explanation. As a humble farmer, I would not wish to have an argument with a lawyer on a legal matter. Her point makes sense. The land occupied by many of these game species will be subject to support through the Bill, not least because of the wish to restore natural habitats and environment, and preserve some of our fragile natural environments.

What is not in doubt is that when the animals have been shot, prepared and put on the supermarket shelves, they qualify as food. Therefore, it struck me that some points made in the evidence session were not prepared to look at this as a useful source of food. Having heard the Minister’s sensible and legally wise words, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I beg to move amendment 13, in clause 1, page 3, line 17, at end insert

““protecting or improving the quality of soil” includes the restoration of blanket bog and other peatland habitats.”

The right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby, the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith, and I served on the previous Bill Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank the Minister for her response, and I take her point about habitat, but peatlands are so important that I still think they could be included in this provision. The Minister has sort of argued both ways, in that she said “soil” did cover blanket bog and peatland and then said that this amendment would widen the definition, but this is so important and we do need action. As I have said, the Minister in the Lords, formerly the MP for Richmond Park, has made it clear that he wants a ban on peat burning. That is not specifically what this provision speaks to, but obviously we are going to give—

[Mr Goodwill]

Does the hon. Lady agree that a distinction needs to be drawn between the blanket bogs—such as Saddleworth moor, where the fire got right into the bog—and the drier, heathland type of moor that we have in North Yorkshire? The North York Moors National Park Authority itself supports the traditional management of that moor, particularly for the benefit of sheep but also of grouse.

[Kerry McCarthy]

There is a whole argument to be had about the management of moors for the benefit of grouse, when grouse are imported into this country in their millions just so they can be shot by people on an away-day. I would not have thought that was a priority.

Given peatland’s carbon role, its importance in the area of flood mitigation and all the other environmental benefits I have mentioned, it is important that we spell this out on the face of the Bill. We argued in the last Committee about whether the definition of “soil” needed to be spelled out on the face of the Bill, and I am asking for it to be spelled out in greater detail this time around. As such, I would like to press the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Agriculture Bill (Fifth sitting)

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to the Minister for clarifying some of those points. She said that the Government aim to create as much certainty as possible. That is sadly not how it feels to many in the sector. Part of the reason for people’s concerns is that they wonder why some of this was not in the original Bill. That is why I keep returning to the underlying philosophical principles driving this. That is my concern and what has fed people’s worries.

Of course, we welcome the changes and improvements to the Bill. However, as I said earlier, Government Members raised questions 14 or 15 months ago. I suspect they will not necessarily be reassured by this. They would like to see something stronger, as we would. That is why—as this part of the Bill is so important—we will press the amendment to a Division.

I noticed—although I am not surprised—that the Minister did not feel able to respond to the observation from the British Poultry Council. Those are very strong statements coming from some sectors. I am of an age that I can remember the debates about manufacturing in the 1990s. I recall a visit that I made to one of the shoe factories in Norwich with the late, great Robin Cook. We were stunned to hear from that business that they had had a visit from a very enthusiastic Minister in the then Conservative Government to tell them, essentially, that they were not needed any more; the future was going to be different.

My concern, which is reflected by others, is that extraordinarily, in our great country, with its wonderful rural traditions, there is in some quarters a school of thought that sees the same outcome as a possibility for agriculture and farming. That is why we are so concerned and why we believe the powers should be strengthened.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Is the hon. Gentleman not concerned that the inclusion of the word “must” could open up the Government to judicial review from farmers who could make a sensible argument that not all the objectives are being fully funded? They could then revert to the courts to try to get that through. That is not what I believe the Government should be doing with the Bill.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I always listen carefully to the right hon. Gentleman, because he knows of what he speaks, but I wonder whether that is a slight red herring in this case. What he warns of could come about, but on balance I would say that that is a risk worth taking to strengthen the Bill. To me, the risks that I have just outlined are greater.

I have huge confidence in the future of the sector, but some ideologues in the world have strange ideas. I do not think that is unique to one party or another. I would just caution Government Members to be aware that they, too, have people with some interesting thoughts on their side. In my view, the country needs such people to be seen off. I suspect that there is, if not unanimity, then considerable cross-party support for that point. We want our agricultural sector to continue to thrive and prosper. Food production is a key part of that, and we want that strengthened in this legislation. On that basis, I will press the amendment to a Division.

--- Later in debate ---

In our view, agroecology is at the heart of what the Bill tries to achieve. We do not think it should be left as a legislative footnote in clause 1(5). Amendment 3, which is complementary to amendment 2, would clarify what constitutes food produced in an “environmentally sustainable way”.

[Mr Goodwill]

The hon. Gentleman’s amendments are entirely laudable, in that we should wish to encourage the production of more organic food in our country. However, in the evidence sessions, we heard some concern from representatives of the organic sector that the supply-demand balance in the organic market in the UK is very delicate, and that over-incentivising switching to organic production may undermine those at the forefront of organic production and may result in market collapse. We have already seen that—to an extent—in the liquid milk market, where organic production has exceeded demand, meaning that those who have invested in organics have not reaped the benefits they would have wished.

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has seen research by the Royal Agricultural University, Cranfield University and the University of Reading into the impact of organic production on the environment and on food production in general. Although they found that greenhouse gas emissions from organic production were 20% lower and that there would be

“a 4% reduction in livestock emissions and a 6% overall direct emissions bonus if the UK went fully organic”,

they found that the effect on food production as a whole

“would be a 40% reduction in total food production in England and Wales when expressed as total metabolisable energy (ME) output.”

That means that a massive switchover to organic may not only collapse the market but may cause us to have to import more food. Organic production produces less food, but the overall demand for food in this country in terms of calories needed would remain the same—indeed, it would increase in line with the population.

My worry is that the hon. Gentleman’s amendments would over-incentivise switching to organic production, which would not necessarily have all the environmental benefits we expected, particularly if the grain production, for example, that was lost to the UK because of a switch to organic was replaced by imports from places such as Brazil, where rain forest deforestation is carried out. That may have the opposite effect to the one that we expected. I absolutely understand the sentiments behind the hon. Gentleman’s amendments, but I wonder whether the law of unintended consequences might come into play.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

We have had a good discussion pointing out some of the interesting trade-offs and tensions that we face as we look ahead. I was struck by the point made by the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby, because it seems there are potentially many unintended consequences of the changes that we are about to make. I absolutely understand his point about oversupply. All I would say is that if we are trying to tackle the climate crisis, we will have to manage the transition. That is one of the great challenges of the Bill.

A long time ago, I was a student of early modern economic history. The terrible crisis that faced farmers and communities was the constant problem of how people deal with dearth and plenty. Year after year, we saw populations across Europe struggling with that. I gently suggest that the post-war settlement, and the development of a system to try to manage that problem, was what the common agricultural policy was originally about. That is one of the reasons that we now have to change it and reform it. It was never set up to deal with the environmental challenges, although there have been attempts to reform it. The basic question of how we ensure that we have sufficient food for our population, and a decent return for those producing it and living in rural communities, does not go away just because it has not been a problem for a while.

[Mr Goodwill]

The hon. Gentleman makes a sensible and considered point. My concern was that, in the same way as we strove to reduce our carbon footprint in the metallurgical industries by offshoring some of the production of steel and aluminium outside our country, we might see a risk. For example, it is virtually impossible to produce oilseed rape in an organic way; the weed pressure is such that it is almost impossible. We might find that we export production of oilseed rape to countries where that production is less sustainable, resulting in more carbon being burned and possible deforestation.

[The Chair]

Order. May I take this opportunity to remind Members that interventions should be short and to the point? There is plenty of time to make speeches in the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

The amendments cover a huge number of areas that could occupy us for many hours, no doubt. I promise I shall spare the Committee that. Greatly missing from the Bill, however, is the understanding that how we manage our agricultural systems not only has implications for the environment but for public health. What we grow and the support we provide for that affects the availability of healthy food, as we have already discussed. The current overuse of antibiotics to counter high stocking densities in livestock continues to be linked to worrying trends in levels of antibiotic-resistant diseases. Pesticide use can also have impacts beyond biodiversity on human health.

The Government’s White Paper “Health and Harmony: the future for food, farming and the environment in a Green Brexit”, which prefigured the Bill, highlighted the key links between our agricultural and food supply systems and public health outcomes. Yet, as my predecessor pointed out, where has health gone in the Bill? It does not seem to be there, and we think it should be.

Amendment 34 would therefore include “improving public health” in the list of public goods for which farmers would be eligible to receive financial assistance. Amendment 35 outlines specific priority areas we believe should receive funding, including the key areas of reducing antibiotic use; reducing harm from the use of chemicals and pesticides, particularly pesticide residue on food; and increasing the availability and affordability of healthy produce such as fruits, vegetables and pulses to encourage healthier diets.

Reducing antibiotic use in particular is a clear global public good. We know that antimicrobial resistance is increasing across the world and that the United Nations has identified the overuse of antibiotics in farming as one of the biggest emerging threats to human health. In particular, routine preventive dosing of healthy animals with antibiotics has implications for the rise of potentially fatal viruses, and we have already seen outbreaks of viral diseases that have spread to people, such as bird flu and swine flu, which have been directly linked to intensive farming.

Over the last few years, our farmers have rightly cut back on using antibiotics. We appreciate that, but we believe that more needs to be done. We also think that moving outside the European Union and its rules has put a question mark over our position on that. At the moment, we have our UK voluntary standard produced by RUMA—the Responsible Use of Medicines in Agriculture alliance—which requires farmers to avoid routine use of antibiotics, but we still do not have legislation banning the routine use of preventive antibiotics on groups of healthy animals in the UK.

The European Union has seen the light and has agreed to end the use of all routine antibiotic use, including group preventive treatments, by January 2022. So far as I am aware, however, we have heard nothing from the Government on whether we will follow suit. I would appreciate the Minister’s observations.

We believe that we need concrete incentives in the Bill to reduce antibiotic use now. I am well aware that farmers operate in a marketplace and need to produce food at affordable prices, and indeed at various price points. That is why we believe that help for people is legitimate when we want to make that change. Finance should be made available to support farmers to make those changes.

Surprisingly, as far as we can see, the Bill makes little mention of pesticides. We will discuss the need to monitor pesticide use in relation to the environment with a later amendment, but we all know that those chemicals can have an effect on human health. Last year, Soil Association research showed that reliance on modern intensive farming methods means that every day we are exposed to traces of potentially carcinogenic compounds left on fruit and veg. I suspect that we will return to such contentious points later, but some foodstuff tested by the Soil Association was contaminated with up to 14 different chemicals.

In the evidence sessions, we heard some of the difficult questions about the science of such issues, and I fully admit that it is contested. None the less, it is important. When we used to work under the precautionary principle, we were cautious about such things. According to the Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food, pesticide traces were found in 45% of thousands of tested samples of food and drink bought in the UK in 2018, so it is a significant issue.

The potential implications of repeated spraying of pesticides in rural areas on the health of rural communities has also been well documented in the past, although I fully acknowledge that all farmers are cautious and careful, not least because of the costs involved—people do not do this willy-nilly—but, sadly, not always in ways that necessarily protect the adjoining rural communities.

[Mr Goodwill]

I understand that pesticide residues must be minimised, but is it not the case that the current generation that is living to ever-increasing ages, with more people than ever before at 100 years of age, is the first generation not to be brought up entirely on organic food?

[Daniel Zeichner]

The right hon. Gentleman tempts me to go back to the Marmot report. Sadly, not everyone is living to 100—not everyone necessarily wants to live to 110 or 120, of course—and the worry is that the increase in life expectancy appears to have stalled. However, he makes an important point. I am not one of those who thinks that life was so much better in the past. Most of us can recognise plenty to celebrate in the modern world and in the technological advances we have made, but alongside those advances we have learnt some of the downsides and unintended consequences of some of the things that we can now do. Perhaps we are at a point in time—to go back to this being a key moment in developing our policy for the future—to look at the decisions made 40 years ago to tackle scarcity and shortage. Now, we might be tackling a different set of problems. That is why the debate is so important, but the right hon. Gentleman makes an important contribution.

Going back to the potential issues with pesticides, in March 2017 the report of the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food highlighted the fact that chronic exposure to agricultural pesticides has been associated with several diseases and conditions, including cancer, developmental disorders and sterility, and that those living near crop fields are particularly vulnerable to exposure to those chemicals.

Again, I acknowledge that some of that is contested, but it would be unwise to suggest that there is no potential problem here. If we can find ways of reducing the risk, that is surely something to be sought. It is also the case that, while those who are administering the pesticides should use protective equipment when using agricultural pesticides and there are clear guidelines and rules on that, adjacent rural residents and communities do not necessarily have anything like the same protection—most do not have any protection at all—and there are still no mandatory measures in the UK specifically for the protection of those rural systems.

Alongside that, boosting our supply of fruit and veg is particularly important for public health, as we have just discussed, so that people can have access to fresh, sustainably produced fruit and vegetables closer to home. We know that low intake of fruit and veg is among the most important dietary risk factors for chronic disease, including heart disease and stroke. I am told that, sadly, only 31% of British adults and 8% of children currently achieve the Government’s recommendation of five portions of fruit and vegetables per day.

We are using far less of our agricultural land to produce fruit and vegetables than we could—only 1.4% in England, when the Public Health Policy Evaluation Unit estimates that we could be using up to 19% of land to cultivate crops of fruit and vegetables. Looking back, we had a very different mix in past times. This is part of the wider discussion about the extent to which we are part of a global trading system and want to import things that we could very well produce here. Again, it is part of the economic trade-offs.

Agriculture Bill (Third sitting)

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 13th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)]

Q I want to pick up on the question of divergence. I realise that the Bill affects England, but there are plenty of farms around the border. How will they be affected and what can we do in the Bill to support them more?

Dr Fenwick: There are about 600 cross-border farms. Some are administratively answerable to England and some to Wales, depending on the proportion of land on each side of the border—I think that is how it works. Those guys have consistently been the last people to receive payments of any form for the last 15 years, since basic payments and what is generically called the single farm payment was introduced in 2005. They have a very tough farm and are placed at significant disadvantage.

Divergence will clearly be an issue for those farms. Conversely, some of the powers in the Bill would lessen the impact, allowing their payments to be released earlier by changing EU regulations that make it difficult when one payment authority is slower than the other at processing applications—because unless everything has been processed, payments cannot be released. The ability to change the rules is therefore welcome, but as things diverge, as they may well do—it is difficult to see how they would not—a lot of thought and care needs to be taken regarding those impacts. It is not just divergence over payment systems and policies; it is also about standards. This provides an opportunity for Wales to, for example, have different assurance standards from England, yet we have a 300-mile-or-so border, which is effectively porous.

John Davies: As one of the UK NFUs, we have a fantastic working relationship. We met last week in Glasgow at NFU Scotland’s AGM. Divergence is front and centre of all our minds, because it is vital that we do not diverge too greatly and create a different trading environment in the UK. That is really important. The key basis that we always operate on is that everything should be done through agreement, not imposition. That is our guiding principle.

Tim Render: Divergence is a consequence of devolution, in that you are making different choices to reflect different circumstances, although I have a lot of sympathy for Mr Davies’ points about operating in a common market, and about standards and not diverging in some of those areas.

The issue of cross-border farms keeps me awake at night, as I think about how I move to develop a new policy. It is one of the really difficult issues. We do not have clear answers to it yet. We are working with the industry and DEFRA on what doing potentially quite different things in return for public support on either side of the border means for those 600-or-so farms that are potentially on either side of that. How we manage that is a tricky question. I do not have any answers to that, but it is something that we are working on with DEFRA and the industry, to work out what the most practical, simple and effective way of doing it is.

Dr Fenwick: When it comes to divergence, of course devolution implies divergence. We as a union supported devolution, so we have no problem with divergence, but it was divergence within boundaries. The current EU framework has strict boundaries in terms of flexibility within legislation and flexibility within financial limits. We are looking, potentially, at a complete liberalisation of those boundaries, so that they become far wider and the degree to which divergence can be market distorting becomes potentially far greater under what is happening at the moment.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Q This question is primarily for Mr Render, but others may wish to chip in. In earlier evidence sessions, we heard some of the frustrations with the inflexibility of cross-compliance, such as the three-crop rule or rules on hedge cutting. In particular, farmers tell me that it can sometimes be frustrating that rules on the application of slurries and manures are based on the calendar, not on the particular climatic conditions of a season or the situation on a particular farm. Do you feel that the powers that you will have will allow you the flexibility—even in-year flexibility—to enable you to carry out those sorts of operations under the best conditions, and at the same time to understand your obligations in the way that we implement the nitrate regulations and water framework directive-type regulations that we take over? Do you feel that you can get the balance right between the flexibility and the obligations to the environment?

Tim Render: I think we can. The questions around water and diffuse agricultural pollution are live in Wales at the moment. In terms of our regulations under the various water rules, we are some way behind the rest of the UK, and we are looking to take action to ensure that we have effective measures for the management of agricultural pollution.

One of the things, looking to the medium term, is an ability to think about how we do some of the wider regulation: what conditions we attach to future payment regimes; how we link that to the regulatory floor; and things around earned autonomy for more flexibility, in return for clearer, authenticated and demonstrable actions that take account of flexibility while there are, at the same time, clear ways of ensuring and providing assurance that the necessary actions are taken. Those are some of the opportunities that we have in the medium term, adapting some of the regulations, but it is probably through more sophisticated regulation and earned autonomy approaches that we can really provide some of that greater flexibility.

John Davies: Thank you, Mr Goodwill, for the opportunity to comment on this, because obviously regulation has been one of the reasons that Europe has had less favour. Nitrate vulnerable zone regulations are among the most prescriptive and least effective of those that have been implemented by Europe. Let us move away from that. Let us ensure that regulation, when it comes, fills the gaps and is effective. Anybody who thinks that they can farm by date will fail. It is vital that we farm by the ground conditions. We have a changing climate here, and we have to respond to that. We have to evolve, adapt and work effectively to reduce the number of incidents. It is coming down slowly, but we need to move more rapidly to reduce it. It is vital that we get on top of that through effective, proper, reasonable regulation.

[Deidre Brock]

Q I wish to reinforce the point that Mr Render and Dr Fenwick made. They basically made my point for me: the four nations already operate different policy and regulatory frameworks, within a common framework across the UK, and with certain common frameworks under the EU. That has been the case since devolution 20 years ago. I would hate to see any sort of imposition of a UK-wide situation that would affect that.

Tim Render: I agree with that. Equally, there are some measures that need to operate across the UK for trade and operators. The red meat levy is a very good example of something that needs to be applied at the UK level, but from a devolved Administration perspective, where some of those powers operate at a UK level, that needs to happen with our consent and agreement. Yes, let us agree a common approach to something—that is very often the best approach—but, for us, those sorts of concurrent powers need to be with consent.

Dr Fenwick: To give an example of the sorts of divergence at a very simplistic level that will potentially have an impact in the coming months, the Direct Payments to Farmers (Legislative Continuity) Act 2020 received Royal Assent the day before we left the EU. That effectively cuts and pastes EU payment regulations back into domestic legislation. However, one section of the Act allows devolved regions—this relates primarily to Scotland—to exceed those financial ceilings that are effectively derived from EU-set ceilings.

Within hours or minutes, effectively, of our leaving the EU, we have the potential for financial divergence that would increase the difference between the average payments received by a Scottish farmer and a Welsh farmer, which is already in the tens of thousands, potentially to far more. That relates to the Bew review, which has given lots of additional money to Scotland. Previously, that money could not be paid to farmers. The new legislation allows them to diverge—I go back to that word—from the ceilings that are set in the legislation.

John Davies: We have a very clear ambition for a policy made in Wales, where we see the productivity and the environment meshing together, underpinned by a stability pillar that will give us real opportunities. We are ambitious for the future. There is real opportunity out there to make policy in Wales, for Wales, by Wales.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy]

Q Meeting net zero is a public good, looking at climate mitigation and adaptation. Do you feel the Bill could be stronger on that? My concern is that while in a sector like transport it is quite easy to make big policy moves that shift us, say, to electric vehicles, because there is only a small number of car companies, in agriculture there are lots of different types of farmers with a large geographical spread. How do you get them all working towards that net zero goal, and could the Bill be a mechanism to do that more effectively? I have not heard much from the National Farmers Union about the road map for getting there.

Gareth Morgan: It is fantastic that the NFU has taken the position of committing to an early net zero target for the agriculture and land use sector. That has shifted the debate enormously. Establishing the route map by which you do that is quite difficult. I am not entirely sure that a net zero clause in the Bill is the right way to go about it.

In several sectors—such as transport and energy generation—we have a clear idea about what that route map needs to be. Land use will be much more complicated. We do not know all the answers yet—for example, in the current argument about red meat, we are veering a different way each month. Setting a clear trajectory in farming to net zero in law could be counter-productive. The easiest way for us to go net zero in terms of land use in the UK is to stop farming and plant trees everywhere and import food off our balance sheet. That would be madness, but it could be an inadvertent consequence if we get the wrong sort of legal fix into law. I think the Bill could be more explicit about net zero and the need to achieve it, but we need to be careful about the way in which we phrase that.

[Mr Goodwill]

Q Conversion to organic farming is quite an expensive process, because during that conversion period one cannot sell organic products. Do you think there should be more incentives for farmers to switch to organic production and, if so, how can we ensure that we do not flood the market with organic food and therefore undermine the whole economic basis for organic farming?

Gareth Morgan: That is a well-made point. In food, demand and production need to be balanced. That is true not only of organic produce; it is a general point.

One key point is that it would be helpful if the Bill recognised the specific contribution that organic farming can make against a whole range of public goods. Rather than inventing a complicated system in parallel with organics—for example, saying, “If a farm satisfies the carbon criteria, the biodiversity criteria, the rotations and the rest of it, then we will make a payment”—let us just cut to the chase and say that it makes sense for there to be some kind of organic maintenance payment to recognise additional public goods that are there but cannot be recovered through the market. I think that would in some sense help with the conversion issue, because if farmers are clear that if they move to an organic model they will be rewarded, both by the market and for the public goods that they provide in the longer term, then that will give them that level of certainty.

Regarding conversion, you are right—I think there needs to be caution around doing that, because in the past we have had examples of where there has been over-conversion to organic ahead of the market being ready to be there. So I think the focus on some sort of organic maintenance payment in ELMS is absolutely vital.

There is a role for help with conversion, but it may not be in terms of straightforward payments during that period. It may be through things like the ancillary productivity payments or some of these other issues that are acting as a barrier to conversion. For example, bringing livestock back on to arable farms will be quite a difficult operation, and most people who convert to organic would need to do that if they are an arable farm. So help with the process of establishing those things might be the way that one could assist in that process.

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

Q As you know, clause 1 provides financial assistance for protecting and improving the quality of soil and, as you mentioned earlier, soil is highly variable and it is difficult to set the standards equally across all the farmers. You mentioned something about tools for farmers—being given specifically, I guess, for the 25 years that you mentioned. Are there any specific measures that you would like to see mentioned in relation to soil health?

Gareth Morgan: At the end of the day, there will have to be some sort of whole-farm planning process. I am sure the Minister has thoughts about this: there is an aspiration to reduce our transaction costs, around the amount of advice and so on that schemes involve. I think there is a limit to how far that can go, so at the end of the day I suspect that any farmer who is receiving substantial public good payments will need to have some kind of system of working with an adviser around a whole-farm plan, which will enable them to put the measures into place, particularly for something like soil.

There are general measures that are great for wildlife and the environment, like having flower margins around fields, having rough grass margins and the rest of it; they will be useful anywhere. With something like soil, I cannot really see how that can be done without the support of an agronomist, or a specialist, or someone helping the farmer and working on the nature of the soil on that particular farm. That need not be done by Government advisers; it could be done by certifiers, or private suppliers and so on. But without that level of support being built into the system, it is quite hard to see how farmers will be able to make the transition that they might want to make on their farm to things like sustainable soil management practices.