Leaving the EU: Agriculture

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making an interesting speech. It is important that our policy on food standards is evidence-based. Salmonella rates are 1.5 times higher in Europe than they are in the US. We must not proceed in any trade deals on the basis of any anti-American bigotry. I am not suggesting that the hon. Lady is guilty of that, but some who contribute to these debates are. We must proceed only on the basis of evidence.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I agree with that, but the Soil Association has come up with a list of 10 products that are currently banned that could enter UK markets if we enter into a trade deal with the US. Chlorinated chicken and hormone-pumped beef were banned for very good reasons.

[Andrew Percy]

indicated dissent.

[Kerry McCarthy]

We have different views on EU protections, but the EU ban on chlorinated chicken was introduced in 1997. Hormone-pumped beef was banned before that. If the hon. Gentleman asked his constituents whether they wanted these products in the UK market, I think they would support his Environment Secretary’s position, whether they see these things as animal welfare concerns or food safety concerns. When he was giving evidence to the Select Committee, the Environment Secretary said that he saw that issue as a red line in negotiations and that we should not allow such things in. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can ask the Environment Secretary what evidence he has considered. On that note, I will conclude my remarks.

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[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Bone. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today. I am not a farmer—I am perhaps unique in that. I do farm votes, however, and I am pleased to say that my productivity rates in every election have improved, so that means I am doing a good job for the farmers I represent. Indisputably, I represent the finest farmland in the United Kingdom, in east Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire, which is some of the most productive. [Interruption.] I am pleased to hear the cheers of agreement from my hon. Friends.

I have a number of points to make, many of which have already been made, but as Members new to the House will have realised by now, that does not prevent somebody else from making them. I would emphasise the point made by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). I thought his speech was excellent and there was not much I could disagree with. Particularly important were his two points about a UK-wide framework and maintaining the integrity of the market within the UK. I entirely agree. It is an innovative idea to leave the European Union and then copy the European Union’s decision-making model, but it is one worthy of consideration.

In considering agricultural policy, we have to think in the broader context of the whole of food and drink in the UK and how we support that entire sector. What we do in the agricultural sector is so important in the supply chain through to the food and drink sector, which is such an important part of our exports. I am very involved in food and drink export promotion in my role as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Canada, and we need to ensure that policy is connected across Government with that in mind.

Comments have been made about labour flexibility. I am a Brexiteer, and I think we have made the right decision. Last night, I was a remainer, for staying in this place. I look forward to the second vote—obviously, we voted to leave by a very narrow margin.

I and most of my constituents fully understand that we have to maintain labour flexibility. I think most of the public will buy into an immigration system that we can trust, which matches skills to the areas of the country with shortages. Brexit gives us the opportunity to have a sensible, informed debate about immigration, as has happened in many countries, such as Canada and Australia.

I have another point here, but I cannot read my own writing—I used to be a schoolteacher—so I will ignore that. I agree with the comments that were made about animal welfare. My real reason for coming here this afternoon is that I want to talk about what we do in terms of our trade deals with the rest of the world. As I said when I intervened on the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), we must build trade deals on the basis of evidence. In the previous couple of Parliaments, I was very involved in the all-party group on transatlantic trade. It originally focused on the transatlantic trade and investment partnership negotiations, which of course are going nowhere, but eventually focused on the comprehensive economic and trade agreement.

I want to chide the Secretary of State slightly, because some of his comments about American food production and chlorinated chicken have not been helpful to our future relationship. Having access to the US market is incredibly important to British farmers post-Brexit, just as it is important for American farmers to gain access to our market. Any agreement must therefore be based on evidence. Let us look to the CETA model. In those negations, the language that Ministers, Secretaries of State and European Commissioners used was always modest—I will not say that it was not extreme, because that would be a terrible thing to say. The EU and Canada had big differences on standards. In particular, we had a 20-odd year dispute with Canada at the World Trade Organisation about hormones and antibiotics in beef, but it was resolved through CETA and has now ended. Of course, that beef is not coming into the European Union.

Where we have differences, it is still possible to negotiate a deal. Some of the comments that have been made about things such as chlorinated chicken have fed anti-American bigotry, which would not be accepted in any other relationship. There is a lot of evidence out there about chlorinated chicken. I do not propose to go into it, other than to point out that a person would have to eat a full chlorinated chicken to get the same amount of chlorine as they would get from one glass of water. I do not see many people advocating drinking or importing raw water. We must do this on the basis of evidence.

Some of the differences between the EU and the US are based on trade defence, rather than science, so let us have a scientific, evidence-based trade policy. The Secretary of State should be conscious of the fact that talking down the prospect of trade deals with a market as big and important as America is not particularly helpful. That said, it would be incredibly difficult to come to such a deal—I do not underestimate this—particularly if it includes agriculture. The all-party group on transatlantic trade went out and met various American food producers, including an American beef producer—he had a Stetson on—pork people and chicken people. I am not going to pretend that it will be easy to negotiate a deal. Given the agricultural propositions in CETA, it may well be very limited, but let us not buy into this bigotry. Let us ensure that our policy on agriculture and trading relations more generally is evidence-based. I hope the Minister will take that message back to his Secretary of State, who otherwise is doing an excellent job in his new position.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone, and to start the summing up speeches.

We have had an interesting debate, but the most interesting aspect of it was what nobody said. Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of those who spoke were Conservative MPs, nobody suggested that free-market capitalism should be the basis for the production of our most basic, fundamental commodity. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael)—I congratulate him on securing the debate—raised that possibility for as long as it took to shoot it down.

One thing is clear: whether we are in or out of the European Union, we need some kind of sustained Government intervention in our agriculture and food production industries. That is partly because where we have tried to run them through a free, unrestricted market, it has not worked. Does anybody seriously think we have struck the right balance between Tesco and the farmer with 50 or 60 cows, who is trying to get a decent price for their milk and to make sure that the person they sell it to this week will come back and buy it next week?

We have to be cautious, because although everybody can point to the faults, failings and weaknesses of the common agricultural policy, at the moment nobody knows what we are going to replace it with in 16 or 18 months’ time—perhaps in 30 months’ time if we get a transition and implementation period. We have to be very careful that we do not wait so long for a decision that there is a sudden shock to the system. Farmers are the same as workers in any other industry or business; sudden changes without adequate warning do not help them. I ask the Minister to guarantee that we will know about any decisions that are taken in plenty of time so people can adjust to them.

We have to remember that our agricultural industries are not just about the production of food. They also have a massive impact on the appearance and the very fabric of all the nations in these islands. The way that the land is farmed or worked makes a huge difference to its appearance, which makes a difference to its attractiveness as a place to live and has a huge knock-on effect, for good or for ill, on our tourism industry, for example.

Glenrothes and Central Fife does not look like the most rural, farming-intensive constituency in the United Kingdom, but I reckon about 1,000 households in my constituency live either in isolated homes or in homes in groups of two or three, scattered around the countryside. They do not all work full-time in agriculture, of course, but a lot of them do. My constituency is also home to Cameron Brig, the biggest grain distillery in Europe, and therefore perhaps the biggest customer for grain producers in Scotland—perhaps in the United Kingdom.

The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) made a very well-informed speech, which touched on a lot of areas that other hon. Members did not mention. She reminded us that Brexit is not just about what happens to the common agricultural policy; it is also about where workers come from and what conditions they work under.

On the affordability of fresh food, I think staff at my food bank in Glenrothes would beg to differ with the hon. Member for Gordon (Colin Clark), who said that food has never been more affordable. The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) used a lot of his time to sing the praises of chlorinated chicken. We respect each other’s views in this place, so the hon. Gentleman is welcome to his opinion. He is also welcome to his chlorinated chicken, but I do not think many of my constituents will be too chuffed if taking back control means that someone else decides whether chicken can be chlorinated.

[Andrew Percy]

My point was that people should proceed on the basis of evidence. I am not an expert, but my simple point was that we should listen to what bodies such as the European Food Safety Authority say about such things, rather than rely on bigotry. I trust the experts, not those who buy into anti-capitalist, anti-American bigotry.

[Peter Grant]

It would be nice if the Government’s approach to Brexit was based on evidence, facts and proper analysis, rather than ideology. The hon. Gentleman also welcomed the opportunity to have what he described as an informed debate about immigration. I think it would have been nice if we had had an informed debate about immigration, rather than the desperately ill-informed debate we had up to, through and since the referendum. We have not heard enough about the enormous benefit that immigration brings to these islands and will continue to bring if we allow it to do so.

The hon. Member for Gordon reminded us at Brexit questions this morning that, as far as agriculture is concerned, one size does not fit all. In fact, the danger is that one size very often does not fit anything, so nobody gets the result they need.

Anyone can work out that the needs of a hill farmer or crofter in the highlands of Scotland or in Wales are very different from the needs of a dairy farmer in the south of England, or indeed of a fruit grower in lowland Scotland or lowland Perthshire. That means that whatever framework is put together has got to be capable of being adapted and applied flexibly to ensure that the decisions taken are those that are most suited to where they are being applied.

I do not have an issue, and neither does the Scottish National party, with recognising that in some areas of public policy there are huge benefits to having one framework and one set of rules to apply everywhere. For example, animal welfare standards are common throughout the United Kingdom—good idea. Let us face it, they are going to be common throughout the United Kingdom and the European Union, because we will still want to be able to sell our stuff across the Irish border, so Northern Ireland will have to fit in with European Union standards in the longer term.

It is essential that a decision that something will be taken on a UK framework basis is a decision by consensus. I am waiting, as are a lot of people back home in Scotland, to hear the Government confirm that no UK framework policy will be decided without the consent of the devolved Administrations, and that once it has been agreed that something needs a UK framework, the content and detail of that framework will be agreed by consensus among the four equal partners in the Union, not simply imposed on us by a Government in Whitehall—nor indeed imposed on the farmers of England by a Government in Edinburgh.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

I am not convinced that defining a specific voting system now would be particularly helpful. I would not have a problem with the system being more devolved in England, if only there were a government structure to allow that to happen, because farmers in Devon do not necessarily need the same response as the farmers of east Anglia—but that is for the people and representatives of England to sort out. If decisions are to be taken that will affect farmers in Scotland, it is essential those decisions are the right ones for Scotland. The best place for decisions affecting Scotland to be taken is in Scotland—if we want to, we can replace Scotland with Northern Ireland, Wales or even Cornwall.

[Andrew Percy]

Yorkshire!

[Peter Grant]

Yorkshire, absolutely—we could possibly even split Yorkshire into north and south, if the hon. Gentleman wants to go that far.

Decisions used to be taken by Ministers or civil servants in the ivory towers of Whitehall and imposed on communities the length and breadth of these islands, but those days have simply got to be over. Scottish farmers produce a significant amount of our food and export earnings. They often provide employment, as the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland pointed out, in areas where there is not a lot of alternative employment. It is important that decisions that affect our farmers are taken by the people they elect.

To pick up on a final point, the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham) asked for complete ring-fencing of the funding. Perhaps, but only as long as the decisions about how much funding is to be allocated and what is ring-fenced are taken by consensus—