Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Goodwill and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

Clear labelling is vital, particularly when it comes to ingredients that may provoke allergic reactions. We have learned a very sad lesson from that situation, and the Government have responded.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

On the subject of the Game Fair, it is very sad that Chris Packham has been banned from attending to speak out against grouse shooting. I would have thought that the Minister would welcome free speech on the subject.

On food, the Government grant for school meals has not risen in the last five years. It is £2.30 per pupil. It is really difficult to provide nutritious meals for children for that amount. Can he speak to the Secretary of State for Education about that?

[Mr Goodwill]

I will certainly speak to the new Secretary of State for Education, a fellow Scarborian, to discuss that issue. It is very important that we have good, nutritious school meals available for children.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Goodwill and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 9th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

Having studied soil science at university, I understand that soil is one of our greatest assets, and indeed the numerous environmental benefits and services that can be derived from activities that enhance soil health will be eligible for public money.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I am glad that the Minister has had a change of heart on that because he argued against my amendment on soil during the Bill Committee, but now he is on the Front Bench. What are we doing to try to meet net zero emissions from farming either through the Agriculture Bill or other mechanisms? The Committee on Climate Change again endorsed that this week. What are the Government doing and when is the target going to be reached?

[Mr Goodwill]

The hon. Lady makes a good point and, indeed, emissions from agriculture have fallen by about 16% since 1990. However, progress has stalled in recent years, with little change since 2009, and I know from the work we did together on the Environmental Audit Committee that we need to make further progress on that, particularly by looking at methane, which has a briefer half-life than other greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and so needs to be dealt with in a slightly different way.

Draft Rural Development (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 Draft Rural Development (Rules and Decisions) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Robert Goodwill and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 21st March 2019 General Committees

[Mr Goodwill]

I am very pleased to respond to the hon. Gentleman’s points, which I have to say are precisely the sort of questions that I have been asking as a new Minister in the Department. It is constructive that we seem to be on the same page about the exciting opportunities available to us as we leave the European Union. I will expand on that in due course.

The two draft instruments will ensure that the rural development programmes funded by the EAFRD continue to operate effectively in the United Kingdom following EU exit. As I said, the development fund is worth some £430 million a year, and the UK—I repeat—has guaranteed that any projects funded from the 2014 to 2020 allocations from the fund will be funded for their full lifetime. The instruments provide the legal basis for continuing to make payments to agreement holders, providing certainty to farms and land managers, and for preserving the existing regime for supporting rural businesses and environmental land management, among other things.

The hon. Gentleman started his remarks by saying that this SI is the one that concerns him most. I have to say, there is nothing to see here. These are not changes; this is maintaining the existing situation so that we can continue the current regime. It is business as usual. The debate gives me another opportunity to reassure right hon. and hon. Members that that is indeed the case.

The hon. Gentleman has not fully grasped the opportunities that life outside the European Union may present. Having sat in the back row in the Agriculture Bill Committee, I know of the tremendous opportunities and the innovative new schemes that will come forward. No doubt those schemes will build on our experience of existing agri-environmental schemes. On my own farm, for example, we are planting nectar plants—the first time that we have ever encouraged weeds, rather than killed them. We need to build on such schemes.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My recollection of the Agriculture Bill Committee is that the right hon. Gentleman disagreed with rather a lot of the Bill. Now he has been promoted to the Front Bench, has he had something of an epiphany so that he agrees with the Government line?

[Mr Goodwill]

If the hon. Lady analyses everything I said in that Committee, as I have done, it was absolutely in line with the objectives and ambitions of the Bill, and the reassurances that I received from my predecessor established the fact that we are on the right page and that we need to move forward. She must revisit the points that I made—I asked some searching questions during the debate, and I was pleased with the answers that I received. Indeed, I was happy to vote for that piece of legislation.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I assure the Minister that I have gone through what he said in the Agriculture Bill Committee with a fine-toothed comb. I have a very long list of where there might now be some inconsistencies, but we can return to them at a future date.

[Mr Goodwill]

I look forward to that robust exchange of views. Indeed, it might be that, given my particular take on some aspects of that Bill, we look at some amendments. Who knows!

The hon. Member for Stroud made a valid point that not all the funds have been drawn down. That is a great disappointment, because the funds are important to develop not only our rural economy but the public goods and the environment that people wish to see. We need to analyse why that was not done. In the case of some of the capital grant funding for improvements to businesses, the EU structure was often very much based on giving money to co-operatives. Many European Union countries have a much wider co-operative structure among their farmers, particularly in areas where there are small farmers, who can work together only if they co-operate. In the UK, we do not have that same history of co-operatives, which in some cases has prevented farmers from applying, say, for better storage facilities.

Secondly, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned, many EU schemes are complicated and over-bureaucratic. We need to look at how to simplify them. Given the egregious exploitation of schemes in some parts of southern Europe, I can understand why the European Union came to the view, in some cases, that every farmer was out to exploit the system in a way that was not intended. My view is that farmers in this country are much more likely to comply and engage with our common objectives.

I met several landowners and farmers at an event last week. The point has been made that we have not made payments as effectively as we should—there have been delays, particularly in the agri-environmental schemes. Many such schemes involve up-front investment, such as buying seeds or hedging plants, so we need to improve our performance to encourage more people to feel that they can invest in them.

The hon. Gentleman talked about funding. There is the small matter of our contribution to the European Union budget, which we will be able to deploy for our own interests. As net contributors, we will be in a better position to make sure that the money is adequately spent. We will certainly be engaging in the spending review and with the devolved Administrations to make sure that we have a fair share of the available money and that it can be deployed as intended and not top-sliced in some other way.

Agriculture Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Robert Goodwill and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Kerry McCarthy]

That is true. Some supermarkets have been a lot better than others. Tesco has taken quite significant steps in auditing the waste in its supply chain; others have only paid lip service. One of the problems with the way that the Courtauld commitment works is that everyone is bundled in together and they report in aggregate, so we do not know who is making progress and who is not. We are also committed to meeting sustainable development goal 12.3, and I believe we should make that a binding statutory target, which must be done in legislation.

[Mr Goodwill]

Obviously, crop yields vary according to the season and often farmers need to grow plenty to ensure that they can supply their contracts. Would the hon. Lady define stock feed potatoes or carrots used to feed livestock as waste, or would that be exempted from her definition?

[Kerry McCarthy]

Let us be clear: this is a discussion we have had in part about whether, if certain produce is ploughed back into the field, it should count as waste. This is not about pointing the finger at farmers and blaming them for what happens on their farms; it is about trying to ensure that the data is there, so that we can see what processes are needed to reduce avoidable waste. In the food waste hierarchy, the aim is to ensure that any food produced that is fit for human consumption is consumed by humans, and then, working our way down the hierarchy, by livestock, and then used in processes such as anaerobic digestion. At the bottom of the hierarchy is landfill—an absolute no-no, I would say.

Although there is a legal obligation for that food waste hierarchy to be enforced, we know that it is not and there are no consequences if people do not follow it. One of the reasons it is not enforced is that we do not have the data on where food waste is occurring. I say clearly that this is not about blaming farmers for anything; it is about trying to reward farmers for doing the right thing. We need the information to be available.

[Mr Goodwill]

May I press the hon. Lady further? On our farm, we used to grow swedes, which by and large were for livestock, but we would harvest and net up one in 10 or one in 20 for human consumption. It would be hard for any farmer to collect data on her description of food that is fit for human consumption but then finds its way into the animal food chain.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I am trying to get at where the policies of the supermarkets and the buyers lead to food waste on farms. We are talking about when food is produced and supermarkets reject the produce—sometimes on spurious cosmetic grounds, but usually because of poor predictions of when they will need it. Perhaps it is a bad summer and the supermarkets are not selling as many salads or other summertime foods as they otherwise would. That is what we are trying to get to the bottom of.

This is not about farmers choosing to do certain things with their produce; it is about trying to get to the bottom of the unfair relationship. We have the Groceries Code Adjudicator, but although there are measures in the Bill to strengthen that role, they still do not go anywhere near far enough. The Groceries Code Adjudicator has said that she does not believe she needs any more powers, whereas I know that farmers and a significant number of people throughout the supply chain are crying out for that relationship to be made fairer and be more firmly enforced.

Agriculture Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Robert Goodwill and Kerry McCarthy

Committee Debate: 10th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Kerry McCarthy]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. The EU introduced a law in 2004 that required eggs and egg packs to be labelled as to farming methods. That was the result of consumer demand. It did not ban anything, but it gave consumers the information they needed to shop in the way that they wanted to shop. It led to a substantial shift away from cage eggs and 50% of UK egg production is now free range, but in other respects information on method of production is not available. Unless food is organic, it is quite difficult for higher welfare farmers to get the information across, so that shoppers will be prepared to pay a premium. There are some voluntary and assurance schemes, but it is all a bit of a muddle.

[Mr Goodwill]

Of course we are all keen to ensure that animal welfare standards are maintained and indeed improved. On eggs, the public easily understand the difference between a caged bird and a bird that has had access to the outside, but it is much more difficult for milk production. Can the hon. Lady explain how, for example, cows that are housed in winter for good welfare reasons would be characterised in her way of describing type of production?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I have spoken to dairy farmers and organisations such as the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association about the number of days animals would have to be outside grazing to meet the criteria. Nobody is suggesting that they would have to be outdoors year round, round the clock, no matter the weather. That is something that could be addressed in the guidance. The problem with milk is that, at the moment, most milk is pooled together, so it is impossible in most cases to distinguish the source of the milk when it comes to be marketed, so consumers are in the dark—unless it is organic of course.

[Mr Goodwill]

I understand the point the hon. Lady is trying to make, but would this provision not just hand the market on a plate to the New Zealanders, who can keep their cows outside for very long periods, and in that way freeze out British farmers who, because of the weather we have in winter, have to house their livestock for the best of reasons?

[Kerry McCarthy]

That depends on the criteria set. I have heard 120 days mentioned as a possible benchmark.

The problem is not just that the information is not being made available; one of the main reasons I tabled the amendment is that there is quite a lot of misleading marketing that gives consumers the impression that goods are higher welfare when they are not. A pork product from a factory-farmed pig may carry a label that says something like “farm fresh” or “all natural”. Packaging can carry images of green fields or woodlands. I was praising Tesco this morning for its work on food waste and modern slavery, but there was an issue, either earlier this year or last year, where Tesco meat and fresh produce had been labelled with the names of British-sounding farms, such as Boswell Farms beef steaks and Woodside Farms sausages, and it transpired that not only did those farms not exist, but in some cases the produce had been imported. That is certainly misleading the public, and I might use stronger language to describe that behaviour.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy]

If people want to choose to buy organic, they can do so. They can do that at the moment. There is not going to be any judgment as to whether organic is better; it is a personal choice. I thought the Conservatives were all in favour of personal choice.

On the non-meat varieties of bacon and sausages, we do not object to the taste of things; we object to the fact that animals are killed to make them. If they are made from plant-based sources, all well and good and we can all have a nice bacon sandwich without worrying about the little pigs and other creatures. I hope that explains to the hon. Gentleman why we might want to have a veggie-burger occasionally, if he struggles with the concept.

[Mr Goodwill]

On that point, does the hon. Lady think we should follow the lead of France, which, following an initiative by French MP Jean-Baptiste Moreau, has banned misleading words such as “sausage” and “steak” unless they are attached to produce actually containing meat?

[Kerry McCarthy]

No, I do not. I am aware of that move, but I do not think that people are remotely misled. Nobody is going to buy a vegetarian sausage thinking that it has pork in it. It is the same with soya milk and almond milk—everyone knows perfectly well that they have nothing to do with dairy cows. We are underestimating the intelligence of the British consumer if we think that they are going to be misled by things like that.

Agriculture Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Robert Goodwill and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 1st November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Goodwill]

The shadow Minister rather let the cat out of the bag when he said that this issue was somewhat tangential to the Bill. We all subscribe to the idea of reducing food waste and ensuring that the scarce resource and the high-quality food that we have in this country is consumed, rather than being thrown in the bin and contributing to methane production on landfill sites or to the expense of incineration.

I suggest that farmers are probably the people most angry that the food they produce ends up in the bin and not in somebody’s stomach, but the decision whether food is wasted is out of their hands; it is in the hands of the consumers, the supermarkets and the catering industry. How much food in fridges is thrown away because it goes past its sell-by date? How many pensioners in the supermarket will be tempted by a “buy one, get one free” offer, only to find that it gives them more than they can manage to eat?

We probably need to look at the catering and food service industry more closely, but it is not within the scope of the Bill. For example, I was in a hotel in Belfast last week where a marvellous breakfast buffet was laid out; I was there at the beginning of service, but the full range of food would have needed to be available until the end, so a lot of it would have had to be thrown away. Indeed, on Friday I was at a meeting of farmers in my constituency. Some of them had had a pub meal before I arrived, and even they could not eat the large amounts of chips that were put on their plates, so no doubt the leftovers went into the waste stream. Historically, a lot of waste used to go into the animal food chain, but because of mad cow disease, that is now much more controlled. Pig swill is not something that can be used in that way because of disease problems.

While I understand the feelings and the motivation behind the amendment, it should not be in this part of the Bill. Perhaps supermarkets could do more than they have so far with respect to what they call “ugly vegetables”. How often has a strangely shaped carrot been thrown away rather than put on the shelves because it is not of the right specifications? Indeed, we could go to the EU and talk about straight bananas and cucumbers, which was something that was often covered in the media during the referendum campaigns.

We also need to consider what waste actually is. A lot of the so-called agricultural waste—stock feed potatoes or stock feed carrots—can actually be used as a viable feed, so reducing waste per se is not always the way to go. I hope that the Opposition will understand that, while everybody agrees with what they want to achieve, this amendment is not the way to do it.

A part of the Bill that does not need amending relates to grants that could be made available to farmers for improving their storage. Farmers get very annoyed about the deterioration of crops in storage—particularly potatoes—over winter. The very best storage conditions mean that more of a crop can be marketed the following year. The Bill already includes provisions for capital grants for farmers to improve that situation. I hope that the hon. Member for Stroud understands that, although we can get behind what he says, this is not the right place to do it.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I am chair of the all-party group on food waste. I will speak to the amendment briefly because I hope to table amendments to the provisions on data and transparency in the supply chain. That is probably the most important angle for tackling food waste because, as other hon. Members have said, in most cases farmers are not really responsible for the amount of wasted food. There is far too much focus on household food waste, and many people in the food supply chain have a vested interest in making it all about whether people throw out their salads or know what to do with their leftovers. In some ways, that lets people in the food supply chain off the hook.

A reason why farmers are forced to waste so much food to the extent that occurs on farms is that it is rejected by supermarkets. Although the Groceries Code Adjudicator has gone some way to addressing that, supermarkets now use spurious cosmetic reasons to reject fruit and veg. Vegetables might be accepted on one day and rejected on another. That is simply to do with the logistics of supermarket sales and the quantities that they need. We need to tighten up the Groceries Code Adjudicator, but we will come to that later in the Bill.

I put two questions about the amendment to the Minister. If food waste were a country, it would have the third-largest carbon emissions in the world, after China and the US. Clearly, from that point of view, food waste is a significant issue. There are measures in the Bill to support farmers who reduce their carbon footprint, and I wonder how the Minister sees food waste fitting in to that?

Measuring food waste on farms can be quite difficult, particularly when a lot of it is ploughed back into the land—would that be classed as wasted? Is using food waste for anaerobic digestion considered a waste or a good use? Farmers using food waste is a good thing—I have been to farms in Somerset where they use waste from local cider mills and bread factories for anaerobic digestion; that is absolutely fine—but how do we address the increasing amount of land being used to grow crops for anaerobic digestion? Fields should be used to grow crops for people to eat, but there is a prevalence of maize being grown for AD. I am not sure where that fits into the Bill, but I want to see farmers rewarded for doing the right thing with food waste, given what I said about it not being their fault. How can we do that while we also incentivise them to grow crops for AD?

Agriculture Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Robert Goodwill and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 30th October 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Kerry McCarthy]

I should begin by declaring that I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on agroecology for sustainable food and farming and have been for some time.

In amendment 72, we call for soil health to be mentioned specifically in the list of public goods. I hope the Minister will be receptive to that—he has made noises that suggest he might be. We know that soil fertility has collapsed in this country. There have been a couple of inquiries in recent years, including a very good one by the Environmental Audit Committee, which looked into soil degradation and the impact on, for example, food productivity and flooding due to run-off.

[Mr Goodwill]

We currently have record wheat yields in this country. Surely that is not evidence of lower soil fertility?

[Kerry McCarthy]

In some places, there is fertile soil. There are measures that one can take—we heard evidence from Helen Browning, I think. I apologise that I am slightly confused about whether I heard evidence in this Bill Committee last week or as a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, because the same people have been giving evidence to both.

There is a lot that we can do to increase biodiversity in fields; for instance, we can take some land out of production, which adds to soil fertility and yield. We heard evidence from Helen Browning of the Soil Association about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy]

I think there is a consensus, at least on the Conservative Front Bench, that soil health is incredibly important and under threat. It should be specifically added to the list of public goods because it is critical to biodiversity, productivity, and mitigating and adapting to climate change—we have not mentioned that yet. The carbon sequestration function of soil is incredibly important. The hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) said in the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee:

“I just cannot understand why it is not specifically defined in the Bill. There is so much good that is there, but it is underpinned by delivering on actually improving the soil and the huge environmental benefits that flow from that.”

As Vicki Hird from Sustain rightly said, there is also a risk that farmers are getting paid for doing things on one part of the farm or on the edge of a field, but are not protecting the soil elsewhere. That is part of the regulatory process, and bringing it into the fold would make sense to ensure that it is part of the picture. I think we are on the same page, but I would like those three words to be added to the Bill to make clear how important soil is.

I tabled amendment 41 with two other officers from the APPG, the hon. Members for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith)—again, the amendment has cross-party support. It was drafted with the help of the Soil Association and Sustain, and is also supported by the Landworkers’ Alliance. Last week, the Minister suggested that he was fairly receptive to the amendment, which suggests that instead of a focus on individual public goods, allowing cherry-picking and just pursuing one or two, there should be a focus on a whole-farm approach, which is by far the best way of delivering many public goods at the same time as producing food.

The “Health and Harmony” consultation paper asked respondents to prioritise a list of public goods. I thought that was the wrong approach, because to prioritise public goods fails to recognise that intersect and that pursuing one public good will help to achieve public goods in another sense. For example, without a reduction in the use of pesticides and without maintaining soil health, water and air quality will suffer. Without output diversification, there will be no improvement to local biodiversity or crop resilience.

The worry is that a limited pot of funding could be focused on edge-of-field nature restoration within an unsustainable wider system. The system should be targeting what happens in the middle of a field, not just around the edges. Approaches to farming such as agro-ecology offer bigger picture approaches that would provide the largest amount of public goods. A whole-farm approach may also be easier to monitor, because the metrics of working out what is going on with individual public goods could be incredibly complicated.

In Committee, Helen Browning said:

“That is why I have been an organic farmer all my life: I do not want to be farming intensively in one place and trying to produce public goods in another… We will still need to do special things in special places so that we can preserve species, manage floods and so on, but the agro-ecological approach should be at the core of our farming system.”––[Official Report, Agriculture Public Bill Committee, 25 October 2018; c. 91.]

Agro-ecology is not just about organic farming. That is one method, but there are also things such as agroforestry, pasture-based livestock systems, integrated pest management, low-input mixed farming and biodynamic agriculture. Agroforestry is a prime example of an innovative approach to farming that produces benefits across several categories of public goods.

The “Ten years for agroecology” project in Europe, which was led by top scientific experts, shows that agro-ecology can address the apparent dilemma of producing adequate quantities of food while protecting biodiversity and natural resources and mitigating climate change. Although it is seen as a bit niche, France has become one of the first industrialised nations to make agro-ecology a central plank of its agriculture policy. In 2014, a law was passed to promote agro-ecological approaches actively. It set a target of implementing such approaches on 200,000 French farms by 2025.

If the French can do it, I dare say there is absolutely no reason why the British cannot. The law also added agro-ecology to the curriculum in agricultural colleges across the country. It has a triple performance: it achieves environmental objectives; it achieves economic objectives by improving yield and efficiency, especially for small and medium-sized family farms; and it has a societal impact, including health and nutritional benefits.

In evidence to the Committee, Ed Hamer of the Landworkers’ Alliance gave an example of how an amendment along such lines would work. He said:

“the integration of whole farm agriculture and agri-ecological principles would incentivise farmers to produce food on the field in addition to introducing ecological focus areas or diversity around field edges.”

He concluded that, with such an amendment,

“it is the farming system itself that delivers the public good.”––[Official Report, Agriculture Public Bill Committee, 25 October 2018; c. 116, Q160.]

The Minister was encouraging about that, saying that the Government are considering empowering agro-ecology under clause 1. Such farming methods ought to become far more mainstream. Since the Secretary of State first came up with the “public money for public goods” approach, I have said that I think he is on the right page and is doing the right thing. I just think he could go a bit further to ensure the Bill is about restoring resistant services, safeguarding our long-term food security and protecting the environment.

[Mr Goodwill]

I oppose amendment 72, not because I am against enhancing soil health in our country, but because I believe the amendment would act against some of our other objectives. As a farmer I manage soil, and as part of my agriculture degree I spent a year studying soil science. Although it is easy to define animal health—it is the absence of disease, or a state in which production from the animal is maximised—it is much more difficult to define soil health. As an intensive arable farmer, I know that the healthiest soil is the most productive soil. Therefore, levels of nutrients—nitrogen phosphate, potash and sulphur—should be optimised to produce optimal soil health. but we need other elements within the soil as well. The cation-exchange capacity must be optimised through the use of lime and other soil treatments so those nutrients are available. The soil also needs to have the correct flocculation status, so that nutrients and roots can travel through it and drainage is optimised.

It is easy to define what productive, healthy soil is, but for some of the objectives in the Bill we need less than optimal soil health status. For example, all farmers agree that the most optimal way to enhance soil health is to have drainage schemes in place, but we have other agri-environmental schemes to try to prevent flooding, such as flood plains and areas of reed beds. Innovative schemes are happening on the North Yorkshire moors above Pickering, where the soil health is not optimised because that land is flooded deliberately to enable the delivery of those schemes.

Similarly, the North Yorkshire moors are a valuable habitat. The land is moor land because the soil is particularly acid and the soil health is bad—bad for growing most things apart from heather. Measures that could be put in place to enhance soil health there could actually act against enhancing that particular environment. We need to look at how we help farmers to manage their farms across the board. Some of their land may well be managed in a way that optimises soil health and production, but elsewhere soil health should deliberately not be enhanced, to allow certain species and habitats to develop precisely because that soil is flooded, acidified or not optimised for production.

Agriculture Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Robert Goodwill and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 30th October 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Goodwill]

The hon. Member for Darlington has made some well-argued remarks, and I am confident that the Minister will be able to reassure her on a number of the points that she made. We are all on the same page.

I will briefly concentrate on one aspect. Who could argue with the four principles in amendment 75? My slight problem is that, having served on the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety for five years—and being partly to blame for much of this legislation, no doubt—the precautionary principle looks, on the face of it, like a good principle. In practice, sadly, it is often misused. My experience was that increasingly, it was being used as a fall-back to ban some activity or substance for which there was not any scientific evidence to justify a ban, or insufficient scientific evidence. For example, if I were to use the precautionary principle when I decide whether to cycle home on my bicycle tonight, I would almost certainly decide not to do so, because I could not prove beyond any reasonable doubt that I would not be knocked off or fall off, and end up in St Thomas’s hospital or worse. Sadly, that type of approach is used all too often.

I can give you an example from my time in the European Parliament, to do with the group of chemicals known as phthalates. They are used to soften PVC—the sort of plastic that is used in babies’ dummies, feeding bottle teats, and many medical devices. Phthalates are chemicals that have effects on human health; they are endocrine disrupters that affect how hormones in the body work. Some sought to ban the use of phthalates as a PVC softener in such products, but the problem was that the medical industry said, “If we cannot use those plastics, the devices that we will have to use will not be as good for operations”—those devices include complex catheters that are inserted during more complex operations. That was an area in which we needed to look at the risks and benefits in the round, rather than issuing a ban based on some risk that might have been unquantifiable, and certainly was not scientifically proven.

The most recent case that shows us why, when we move forward with our own legislation, we need something better than the precautionary principle—something that is much more scientifically based and that can, if necessary, be taken to judicial review and proved one way or another—is the prevention of the introduction of genetically modified crops across the European Union. Many farmers and enlightened environmentalists would have liked such crops to be introduced, to reduce our reliance on pesticides and fertilisers and to make food more nutritious and safer. That is how those crops are used around the world, but we cannot do so in the UK. The precautionary principle has been used to block such technologies, and that was a bad use of that principle.

Rather than accepting amendment 75, we need—now that we can, as we have heard, make our own legislation—something that does the same thing as the precautionary principle but in a more effective way, based on science and not, as is sadly often the case, on prejudice and misinformation.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I will confine my remarks mostly to amendment 71, although I will say that it is really frustrating that the animal sentience Bill disappeared into the ether after the agreement that it would be split from the sentencing Bill. We have not heard anything about it since then. It is not enough to get assurances from the Minister; we need to see that legislation if we are to be convinced that it will really happen.

My amendment is about higher animal welfare. I have seen a timeline from DEFRA that says that a definition of higher animal welfare standards will be set by 2020. I would like to know why it cannot be set sooner, because it rather complicates things if we do not know the parameters that we are dealing with. The key point of my amendment is to ensure that we are not rewarding farmers who just do what is required of them by law.

We are a little too self-congratulatory and complacent about animal welfare standards in this country. There have been numerous exposés of even some of the higher assurance schemes where the letter of the law was clearly not being followed and standards were being breached. We should always be vigilant about that, particularly as we know that future trade deals might result in a race to the bottom, with food that has been produced to lower animal welfare standards, food safety standards and environmental standards flooding into the country. There will be a temptation to cut corners. I know Ministers have said that they will not allow British standards to fall, but I cannot get them to say that they will not allow into the country, for example, US food that is produced to lower standards. Once what I would call substandard produce is allowed into the country, the pressure will clearly be on to compete by, as I say, cutting corners.

At the heart of the amendment is the fact that the Bill does not have a regulatory baseline, and we will lose cross-compliance as we leave the common agricultural policy. I am not quite sure how we will monitor whether farmers are meeting the regulatory baseline. Because we cannot do that, how will we reward them for meeting higher standards? At the moment, I think farmers get their payments withheld if they do not meet certain standards. The current wording of the Bill would make it possible for a farmer to break the law when transporting calves, for example, but still to receive payments for higher animal welfare. Are they going to be judged in the round, or just by particular things that they have cherry-picked?

I want to ensure that financial assistance under clause 1 will be given only to farmers whose welfare standards are higher than those required by law. The definition of higher animal welfare will be very important to that, and it should take into account the desirability of both preventing negative experiences and promoting opportunities to give animals a positive quality of life; those are two slightly different things. Scientists are increasingly recognising the importance for animals’ physical and mental wellbeing of their ability to engage in exploration, investigation, problem-solving and play. That is recognised by the Farm Animal Welfare Committee as well.

A second condition for receiving funding should be that the farmer is a member of a comprehensive assurance scheme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy]

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West is now vegan as well—in fact, three of the four Bristol MPs are vegan. She is completely vegan and a model of good health.

The second condition for receiving funding should be membership of a comprehensive assurance scheme. The RSPCA assured scheme covers all aspects of welfare and has genuinely high standards and rigorous monitoring arrangements. I am not so sure about other assurance schemes, which have been criticised. We need to clarify what the criteria would be.

I want to finish by talking about a few things that Compassion in World Farming has mentioned as additional standards and perhaps the sorts of things that farmers should get additional funding for. On pigs, it says:

“Funding should be available for farmers who achieve intact tails”—

that is, neither docked nor bitten tails. It continues:

“Getting pigs to slaughter with intact tails is recognised by the Farm Animal Welfare Council and others as a reliable outcome based indicator of good welfare.”

In Lower Saxony, I am told, farmers are paid €16.5 per undocked pig under its curled tail bonus scheme. Is that the sort of thing that we could look at rewarding farmers for here?

[Mr Goodwill]

A local pig farmer told us the other day that he had 235,000 pigs. I am sure he would be very interested in a scheme like that.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I went to a higher-welfare pig farm when I was shadow Secretary of State and was appalled to learn that while it could make money selling the pigs to local butchers, any pigs that it could not sell to local butchers or restaurants for local consumption had to be sold to the supermarket, at a loss of £80 per pig. Something is clearly very wrong with a farming system where higher-welfare farmers cannot be funded that way. I also went to a higher-welfare chicken farm that was making 2p profit per chicken, which I thought said an awful lot about the broken market model. Perhaps the pig farmer who the right hon. Gentleman met would like to be paid per intact pig tail—perhaps he could raise that with him.

One of the problems with the pig sector is that it is quite easy to move into or increase numbers, therefore the market fluctuates. If farmers get a good price, people start moving in, and before we know it, too many pigs are on the market and the price dips again—we could spend a lot of time on the economics of farming.

Funding could be available for farmers in the dairy sector who keep their cows on pasture during the grass-growing season. That is a requirement of the pasture promise scheme, which is being developed by a group of farmers. There is a wide range in the welfare quality of laying hens provided for by free-range farms. We know that ordinary free-range systems are supported by the market and are very successful—once eggs started to be marked as free range, the public responded. However, some free-range systems have much lower stocking density, a low flock size, and trees and bushes around, so there are welfare differences among different free-range providers.

At the moment, only 1.2% of UK broilers are produced to RSPCA assured standards. There is an argument for saying that we should provide support only to broiler farmers who are members of the RSPCA assured scheme, so as to encourage others to move away from the lower standard of broiler production. I am not saying that the ones outside the RSPCA assured scheme necessarily have poor animal welfare standards, but clearly there is a higher benchmark to which people could aspire, and we ought to be encouraging them to do that.

Will the Minister say how cross-compliance will work and how we will monitor basic animal welfare standards? How is he going to come up with the higher animal welfare definition, what sort of things will it include, and will he promise to bring it forward a little sooner?