Agriculture Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Alicia Kearns and Deidre Brock

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

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

Q What assessment have you made of the impact of the Bill on food producers, particularly the agri-food supply chain, and are there any missed opportunities in the Bill that you would like to see us take action on?

Huw Thomas: Probably the biggest missed opportunity is the one about standards, which we have already covered, but there are certainly provisions in the Bill that we welcome. The food security provision, for example, is new and something we have been pressing for for quite a while. The requirement to report every five years is not especially ambitious; it should be every year. Especially as we are transitioning out of the EU and leaving those structures behind, we need to ensure we have a review every year. I would also suggest that the Bill does not impose any positive obligations on a DEFRA Minister—for example, in the light of an adverse finding in a report on food security. You could consider placing obligations on Ministers if we are found to be deficient in food security.

Dr Fenwick: From our point of view, it is about more than farming and food production per se; it is about the families that farm on the land. There are certain types of farming that continue, but effectively the communities do not. We see that in parts of England; thankfully we do not see it so much in Wales, if at all. We would say there has been a missed opportunity to include among key priorities the sort of ambition that is there at EU level in terms of the reforms that are going through, which relate to looking after farming families and communities and to laying out sentences explicitly in legislation.

I refer you back to what Tom Williams said about the 1947 Act, which was in place until it was superseded by EU regulations. He said it was based on providing

“adequate remuneration and decent living standards for farmers and workers”—[Official Report, 17 December 1945; Vol. 417, c. 931.]

with a reasonable return on capital investment. We would welcome that sort of aspiration being inserted into the Bill.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

The other day, we heard evidence from John Cross of the Traceability Design User Group and Simon Hall, who is the managing director of Livestock Information Ltd, which is a new organisation. I thought they were a little vague on details of the traceability service that they are setting up in England, and on how it will integrate or potentially even overrule existing traceability services in the devolved nations. I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on that.

Dr Fenwick: Having only had the time to look at this and go through it as thoroughly as I could yesterday, that clause did ring alarm bells for me. Compared with other systems, Wales has a very successful sheep traceability system that it took into public ownership, rather than farming it out to a private body. It works very well. It could work better, as is the case with all systems, but we hope to develop it into an improved system that will encompass more species. That is certainly the aspiration, and that clause of the Bill certainly raises questions about how those two things interact.

It certainly makes sense to have some form of central data collection point for the UK, given that we are a single country and that it is important for our trading arrangements with other countries. Nevertheless, it depends on how that functions. That part of the legislation would effectively grant powers to non-public bodies—boards that are given certain powers by the Secretary of State. That in itself raises questions; indeed, it is why you took evidence from the witnesses that you mentioned.

Tim Render: To build on that, there are clearly some really important operational issues with the livestock identification systems. We are developing the livestock identification system that we already have in Wales, which works very well. It was co-designed with the industry for ease of operation. We also built it with expansion to different species in mind, so we are looking to turn it into a full livestock ID system, building on a proven IT platform and user interface. It is absolutely vital that we get the behind the scenes IT with what happens in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to have that interchange of data, because you have got cross-border trade and that is how you manage animal health issues, which do not respect borders. That is the big piece of IT work that we are doing with colleagues in DEFRA and colleagues in the other Administrations around the livestock identification system. We will build our own front-end system for Welsh farmers to use, building on what the industry sees as a successful system.

John Davies: It is vital that we get this right. Animal disease does not respect boundaries well, and I concur with everything said in terms of the databases talking to each other. There is also an opportunity here to bring realtime information to purchasing decisions around animal health and the likes, and we need to get this right.

Dr Fenwick: If I may come back, to lessen the potential adverse impacts of clause 32, which amends the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, there needs to be at the very least a duty to consult and reach agreements with Welsh Ministers, the Scottish Government and so on to ensure that this does not hand over an extreme power to, in effect, an English board.