Storm Bert
Debate between Toby Perkins and Steve Reed(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I entirely empathise with my right hon. Friend about what he has inherited. We have had the perfect storm of massive funding cuts to the Environment Agency with increased pressures from flooding as a result of climate change. Notwithstanding that, the need for improvements in our flood defences is urgent and critical. How can communities such as mine in Chesterfield, flooded by the Rother and Hipper rivers, engage with the work he is doing so that we can be more prepared, working with the Environment Agency to bridge the funding gap for the existing scheme on the River Hipper? My heart goes out to all the communities across the country that have been so appallingly flooded. They need to know how we can work with the Government to step up the urgency so that our country is more flood-prepared in future.
Steve Reed
I thank the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee for his questions and of course sympathise with residents in his constituency who have been affected by the recent flooding, and indeed previous flooding. The Government are reviewing the flood funding formula to see how we can make it more effective. That includes nature-based flood management, such as planting more trees further upstream to help the land hold more water, so that less rainwater floods downstream to more populated areas where it can cause more damage. That consultation will involve businesses, rural communities, coastal communities and communities such as his all feeding in to ensure that we have a flood funding formula that works for every part of the country.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Toby Perkins and Steve Reed(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Steve Reed
It is a pleasure to take a question from the distinguished former Prime Minister. We are reviewing the data that we can publish, and we want to be as open and transparent as possible. I think that is good for the sector and good for scrutiny, but we will announce in due course precisely how it will operate.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), for coming back to me about the River Hipper scheme, which is of huge importance in my constituency. May I invite her to come to Chesterfield to meet people affected by the flood and see the Holymoorside scheme, which could make a real difference?
Farming and Food Security
Debate between Toby Perkins and Steve Reed(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Steve Reed
I will now make a little progress. I have taken quite a few interventions, and other Members want to speak.
Our new deal for farmers will boost Britain’s food security, protect our environment and drive rural economic growth by tackling the root causes of the long-term issues they face—climate change, rising prices for energy, feed and fertiliser, unfair supply chains, and access to labour. We will ensure that environmental land management schemes work for farmers, and where funding is allocated for farmers we will make sure it reaches farmers, ending the Tory underspends that saw hundreds of millions of pounds held back. We will improve these schemes by working with farmers to boost food security and promote nature’s recovery, including upland, lowland, grass and tenant farmers.
Upland farmers have been left behind. Farmers in the uplands have been losing their basic payments each year, but have not been able to access new schemes. We have arrived in office to find no credible plan to address that, leaving thousands of the most remote and isolated farmers without a clear path for their families, businesses or communities. We need a fair approach for all farmers.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
We all understand that my right hon. Friend has inherited in his Department a panoply of different crises, from the crisis facing our farmers to flooding. He is absolutely right that trying to get the environmental land management scheme to achieve what was originally intended for it is one of the biggest issues facing Britain’s farmers. I appreciate it is very early days, but what is his sense of what the major failures are right now, and what might we look forward to in his plan to sort them out?
Steve Reed
The environmental land management schemes are taking the right approach, but they need to work better for all farmers. Too many farmers feel that they cannot access them or do not get the support that they need. My proposal is not that the Government will dictate to farmers how those changes should happen, but that we should work with farmers, in a partnership, to hear their voices and allow them to influence changes to those schemes that will make them more effective in achieving the many outcomes that we seek to get from that Government funding.
We will not tell farmers how to farm. We will achieve this by working together with them in that new partnership. I recently met the Tenant Farmers Association to hear its views about improving support for tenant farmers. I agree that the proposal for a tenant farming commissioner has merit, and we will make an announcement shortly.
Our new deal will protect farmers from being undercut in trade deals. The Conservative Government’s trade deal with Australia and New Zealand is a disaster for our British farmers. They were sold down the river, as the Conservative party allowed the import of food produced to standards so low that they would be unacceptable in this country. Instead of backing British farmers, the Conservatives undermined British farmers. We want to see more support for British farmers—more opportunities for British farmers, not fewer.
We have already delivered early first steps for British farmers, securing access to the US market for UK beetroot growers and to the South African market for poultry producers. Instead of the botched Tory Brexit deal that threw up barriers to trade and blocked Great British food exports, we will seek a new veterinary agreement with the EU, to tear those barriers down and get our food exports moving again, putting money straight into the pockets of British farmers.