Agriculture Bill (Second sitting)

Abena Oppong-Asare Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th February 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Fay Jones]

Q May I quickly follow up on that? Are you happy with the proposed schedule for phasing out direct payments—moving away from an area-based payment and towards a system of public goods?

David Goodwin: It seems to be very quick. I would repeat Nick’s point from earlier: for things to happen in farming, we need to remember how long some of the cycles in agriculture are. For farmers and farm businesses to prepare for that, they need to know what they are preparing for, and they need to know what they are preparing for a long time in advance of it happening. If you are putting a bull in today, you are not going to be selling the calves, potentially, for three years. We just need to be mindful of how agriculture works and how that fits with the legislation’s aims.

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

Q Do you have any suggestions as to how the Bill could be improved specifically to enhance food production? The reason why I am asking is that I want to look at ways to ensure that poorer consumers are also able to benefit from the high requirements under the Bill—the requirements for a more sustainable, environmentally friendly way of delivering services. I am worried about poorer consumers being left out.

Nick von Westenholz: I think, taking a view of what the Bill is trying to achieve in totality in terms of a sustainable food production system, that the need to provide consumers with affordable and safe food must remain fundamental to that.

One concern we have is that a singular focus on some of the public goods aspects might lead to the food production aspect being overlooked. Indeed, that was a criticism we made of the original Bill. That is not to downplay the importance of the clause 1 public goods elements and the development of the land management scheme, but we have been clear from the outset of the process, some years ago, that a really comprehensive agricultural policy needs to be built of three key blocks. You need a sustainable, environmental block—the sort of stuff that this Bill does very well—but you also need to keep in mind the need to produce food, which is what farmers do as well. You need to encourage increased and improved productivity in the farming sector. Again, the Bill provides the powers to do that, although we are waiting for details from DEFRA about exactly what schemes and measures might be introduced to achieve that.

We also have a concern around what we call volatility, or what might be called stability. That is the stuff that farm support systems around the world generally do, which is underpin the farming sector as food producers to provide a certain degree of food security and affordable food for their country. Obviously, there are new, welcome food security clauses in the Bill. Our concern is that as we go into the next few years, direct payments will be reduced and replaced with a scheme that is focused on environmental land management, and we will potentially be in a very difficult trading environment, depending on how the next 10 and a half months of trade negotiations go. That perfect storm will seriously undermine our ability to provide food. We try to make clear that this system needs to be as much about providing food for the country as it is about looking after our countryside and our farmed animals.

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

Q Can I ask a supplementary question?

[The Chair]

Before you do, I have a large number of people indicating that they wish to speak. Please could Members and witnesses be brief.

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

Q I will be quick. You mentioned that you are waiting for DEFRA to give you further information. Have you highlighted to them which of your recommendations you want them to take forward?

Nick von Westenholz: Yes. We have good communication with DEFRA officials and conversations are ongoing. Given the immediacy of some of the changes coming in, we are looking for assurance that schemes are going to be developed and deployable quickly. There are concerns over that.

[Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con)]

Q Does the Bill include the right measures to give tenant farmers certainty over succession, tenancy length and security of tenure?

Nick von Westenholz: As far as they go, we are pleased with the inclusion of the tenancy clauses in the Bill. They are quite technical and we are looking to develop some amendments to strengthen them, which we will be happy to share with members of the Committee. In particular, we want to bring in more of the recommendations of the tenancy reform industry group, which has been up and running and working for some years now, so that those are properly reflected in the Bill. We will suggest some improvements, but we generally welcome the clauses that have been introduced in this Bill that were not in the last one.

--- Later in debate ---

[Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)]

Q Mr Goodwin, in relation to the next generation of farmers, I would be interested to hear whether you have had any feedback from institutions and how you are working with universities and colleges to ensure that the next generation take advantage of this new legislation.

David Goodwin: We are working closely with various county agricultural colleges at the moment. We have just run an event in the north—I have forgotten the name of the college—in association with DEFRA, through our DEFRA grant holder, to engage with our members about this Bill in particular and the ELMSs that are coming forward. That is a project that we were looking to roll out considerably further; unfortunately, our timescale was put back when Parliament was prorogued and we had to postpone a lot of events that we were planning to run. Agricultural colleges lend themselves well to setting up and running events with our members and our target audience of potential members and people who are looking to come into the industry. We are certainly doing as much work as we can with county colleges and the universities, which are all struggling a little bit for students at the moment.

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

Q My question links in with Ms Crosbie’s question and is directed to Mr Goodwin. As you know, the ageing population of farmers is changing. Is there anything specific in the Bill that you think needs to be changed that could help more young individuals to go into farming? Is there something that you feel needs to be specifically looked into?

David Goodwin: As we have touched on at various points in this session, the crux of the matter is this Bill’s enabling farmers to run effective, efficient and sustainable businesses, both environmentally and economically. From a young farmer’s point of view, the foundation of all this must be a strong, stable agricultural industry. The only way to attract young people into agriculture is to offer them opportunity; it is difficult to sell the idea of working 150 hours a week and being paid less than the minimum wage to people who are not necessarily in love with agriculture. There are no specifics that spring to mind, but anything we can do to support agriculture is a positive.

[George Eustice]

Q I want to turn to a different part of the Bill, chapter 2, and the provisions on fair dealing and transparency in the supply chain. Can you tell us which sectors suffer the most from a lack of transparency and fairness in the supply chain? Which are most likely to be price takers? What regulations or steps would you like the Government to take, under the powers in this Bill, to ensure that farmers are in a fairer position relative to others in the supply chain?

David Goodwin: I have a very quick point on that, specifically pertaining to the lamb industry. We have had quite a lot of feedback from our members about lack of transparency: under the sheep legislation as it is at the moment, we are forced to electronically tag and identify all the sheep, but currently the abattoirs and processors are not required to pass that information back down the chain or identify those carcases as pertaining to those animals. There is a perceived transparency issue with some processes. It is not that potentially we are not being paid the right amounts, but I think people would like to know what our killing out percentages are, so that we can improve performance and make better informed decisions.

Nick von Westenholz: We are working through our commodity boards, which is the way we cover the different steps in the NFU to address exactly how the powers will be used. We are pleased that those powers are in the Bill, but lots of them rely on secondary legislation to operate, so it seems that potentially there is still quite a job to do once the Bill is enacted to ensure that the powers can be used properly to do what they are supposed to do. We look forward to working with officials to work out exactly how those powers can be deployed once the Bill is enacted—that is a feature of the enabling aspect of the Bill. We certainly think the focus on improving the supply chain is a critical bit of the Bill.