Sustainable Livestock Bill

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is right. The NFU has stated that it supports the aims of the Bill, which it thinks is “admirable in intent”, but does not take into account the work that has already been done—a point that I shall make later.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that many people are concerned about what will happen in the future? What concerns them in particular is the keeping of cows in hundreds and hundreds in barns, rather than in the countryside?

[Mr Nuttall]

I agree. My hon. Friend is right. Many people are concerned about that. They can already support organic farming by buying organic products. That is the way forward. I would like to see the problem resolved by organisations promoting organic foodstuffs and by individuals choosing to support, of their own free will, organic farmers and buying organic products. To try and achieve those aims by putting on the statute book legislation such as the Bill before us is not the way forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

Over the centuries, farming has been sustained in this country by the farmer and the countryside has been looked after by the farmer, and I will come on to those matters later in my remarks.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

Farmers have looked after the fields for generations, but does my hon. Friend agree that the problem is that, in future, people will aim to transmute that work, to take it away from farmers and to give it to bureaucrats, who build the sheds that we have criticised?

[Mr Nuttall]

There is a danger of that happening, and I thank my hon. Friend for that point. The Bill may make that problem even worse.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

Or 6,000. That is the crucial point.

[Mr Turner]

No, that is not the crucial point. The crucial point is that the cattle would be kept inside year-round, never setting hoof outside.

[Mr Nuttall]

Any farmer will tell us that an unhappy—if we can use that term—animal does not produce milk.