Sheep Farming

Debate between Ann Davies and Torcuil Crichton

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) for securing this debate and herding us in.

As we are gathered here today, some 4,500 sheep and lambs will be sold at the community-owned and run Lewis & Harris Auction Mart in Steinish, which is outside Stornoway in my constituency of Na h-Eileanan an Iar. The sheep will end up with finishers across the UK, and represent the culmination of a year’s work for crofters in Lewis. They also represent the deep connection that we see here today between the Hebrides and Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland, which is probably best symbolised in this place by the Woolsack that the Lord Speaker sits on in the other House.

Wool and sheep are not worth as much as they used to be. I will not give you live market prices, but I know that with the main store lamb sales season in full swing prices are up. In Stornoway, prices were up by £11; in Dingwall, where Lewis lambs are sold, they were up by £6.85; and at Lochboisdale prices were up by £12. It is unfortunate that the corresponding lamb sale in Lochmaddy in North Uist has not gone ahead this year, but hopefully it may be restored. That shows the economic and cultural importance of sheep to my constituency and the Outer Hebrides.

Sheep have played and will continue to play a great role in keeping communities alive. I come from a crofting community. I grew up on a croft rearing and sheering sheep, sending them out to the moor to our common grazing land, and overwintering and feeding sheep. Ironically, the common grazing lands, which we no longer use so much for sheep, now house wind turbines that bring community profit to the tenant crofters in our area.

The crofting communities are in good shape, and they are in good shape because of sheep. Crofting is best described as small tenant farming, and it is the small tenant farmers who held together communities, towns, villages, language and culture across the whole north-west of Scotland and the islands. The backbone of crofting is, of course, sheep, but the sheep alone will not support us. The industry needs accessible and proportionate support to ensure its future.

A recent in-depth report highlighted the importance of crofting and agriculture to island economies, but it also revealed the extent of the decline in sheep farming in the Western Isles in the last 20 years. Sheep numbers in the Outer Hebrides have decreased by 52% in the last 20 years, down from nearly 300,000 to 143,000 in 2021.

[Ann Davies]

It is really interesting to hear from you when we are talking about crofting and tenant farmers. As other speakers have noted, when we are talking about access to land there is such an issue with farm business tenancies at the moment. The maximum term being offered is 10 years and the average can be as little as five to seven years.

Most tenant farmers work as well as keeping their holdings, as you will know, and over the long term, because of the incomes involved, that is unsustainable. We need an understanding and legislation that secures tenancies in the long term, offering our young farmers —we have talked about young farmers and the YFC movement—security when they start their farming careers. We do not have that at the moment with the current farm business tenancies, so we need to look at introducing legislation from this House.