Agriculture Bill

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock]

I am rather surprised that the hon. Gentleman has not yet read our very sensible proposal for stability and simplicity, which sets out the route map. Let us not forget either that the Scottish Government were the first UK Administration to set out detailed plans for the short and medium term after Brexit. I suggest that he goes online and has a look at our proposal.

Where now are the pledges and promises that were made? Where are the guarantees for Scottish farmers that they will not lose out? Where in this Bill is the guarantee that the cash going to Scotland for Scotland’s farmers will not fall under some newly invented Barnett guillotine or that the additional support that has been available for less favoured areas, which is so important to Scotland, will not simply vanish, like so much else that Scotland is due but Whitehall absorbs? Perhaps we should be looking for a red bus with some numbers on the side and a promise to Scotland’s farmers of untold riches to come. Without that certainty from Whitehall and the news that the funding for Scotland’s farmers is secure, protected from the Brexit meltdown and protected in the long term, farmers in Scotland cannot start planning for the future, and not even the near future.

I looked at the National Audit Office’s report card on DEFRA’s progress in preparing for Brexit and it did not make for pretty reading. It was in fact quite stark, saying:

“DEFRA has not been able to make progress in supporting business in their preparations,”

although it makes it clear that this is partly the fault of the Department for Exiting the European Union for choosing to restrict Departments’ ability to engage with their stakeholders. But whose fault that is will not concern farmers, nor will it be a great concern for those who would like to see food continuing to appear in their shops. The NAO goes on to point out that no information was available on the DEFRA website about the EU exit or any potential changes following Brexit and that, almost ironically, stakeholders such as farmers had to look to the EU agencies’ websites for information about what was likely to follow. The warning about lack of preparedness was pretty stark:

“there is no guidance on Defra’s website for businesses exporting food products to the EU. Some of these may have to apply for an export health certificate for the first time and change trading routes so that their products enter the EU through a border inspection post.”

The most damning part of the report, though, might be the observation that

“DEFRA does not have a clear vision either for the new services and functions it has to introduce or for the organisation as a whole post-EU Exit”.

No clear vision, no plan and no action, but here we are with a Bill to set the future direction. In spite of a 37% increase in the number of legislative staff in the Department, the portfolio board heard in June that

“DEFRA is at high risk of being unable to deliver a full and functioning statute book by end March 2019”

if there is no deal, due to the number of statutory instruments that need to be drafted, but here we are with a Bill that will need further secondary legislation.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

I am slightly surprised by the hon. Lady’s criticisms of DEFRA. I understood that agricultural policy was devolved in Scotland.

[Deidre Brock]

Which is of course the very point we are making. I thought that everyone would welcome the opinions of the Scottish National party and the people of Scotland, because of course in this precious Union surely we are all equals, although I will come to points that directly affect Scotland shortly.

DEFRA admitted to the NAO that it will be unable to handle the increase in export health certificates needed for farmers to carry on exporting their produce to the world’s largest single market because it is currently done on a spreadsheet that only one person can operate at a time. The Department’s long-term ambition is to get up to the same standard of e-certification that other nations use, but the Treasury has not yet seen the business justification document in order to approve it. I will lay odds that the costs of sorting that out will be more than the spare change down the back of the DEFRA sofa.

If anyone thought that animal exports getting done over was enough bad news, they had better not look at animal imports. The UK will lose access to the EU’s TRACES, or trade control and expert system. Data on animal imports will have to be entered manually at border inspection posts, so we can expect higher error rates, delays at borders while manual checks are carried out and an increased biosecurity risk, according to DEFRA’s report card from the NAO. Potentially, we will have high-quality beef sitting on one side of the border waiting for its turn on the spreadsheet to get a health certificate for export, while the supermarket lasagne is sitting on the other side waiting for a border guard to punch its information into the system. In the meantime, farmers will be watching their livelihoods disappear, while every truck in the game is held up at the border.

There are two points, parallel to those issues, that are vital to Scotland’s food production and marketing. The first is the need for seasonal workers. My hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) will go into our concerns about that at length, but I will quickly add that the pitiful pilot scheme announced recently for seasonal workers would have been laughed at, had we not already seen crops rotting in the fields this year for want of workers to pick them. The other issue is the need for protection in global markets. Those needs are being ignored in Whitehall.

The position on geographical indicators and other protections is similar. The EU currently protects Scottish produce in international markets, including Scotch whisky, Scotch lamb, Scotch beef, the cheeses, Stornoway black pudding, and so on. There are similar products elsewhere—the Melton Mowbray pork pie springs to mind, along with Fenland celery and Yorkshire rhubarb. The Minister of State for Trade Policy gave evidence to a Committee of the Scottish Parliament last month, and said that Scotch whisky would continue to be protected because of the importance of Scotch whisky exports to the UK economy, but that the others were basically up for grabs. He said:

“PGIs present quite serious difficulties in free-trade negotiations because some nations regard them as unfair protection or non-tariff barriers to trade.”

He went on to say that the issue is not straightforward in trade negotiations because we would have to demonstrate market penetration or recognition. In other words, protections in international markets for goods produced here will be negotiating chips on the table in each new trade deal that the UK looks for. Scotland’s farmers, having built a reputation for quality and traceability that helps to sell their products across borders, are about to see their market share threatened, even if they can get through the border posts, because they will be losing easy access to the world’s biggest single marketplace, but also because the protections that the machinery of the EU afford will be stripped away as the UK struggles to learn once again how to negotiate trade deals and negotiates away any protection that our unique products might have had.

It is notable that the briefings on the Bill that I have received from organisations in England are broadly in favour of it, while the briefings from organisations in Scotland are not.

In this, as in so much else, Scotland and England are different, and the differences cannot be easily reconciled. There was a time when Ministers in Whitehall acknowledged and accepted those differences and to an extent celebrated them as part of the diversity of the UK they sought to govern. Acknowledging that diversity and respecting its history could be achieved by respecting the devolved Administrations. There is no need for a power grab. There is no need for the centralisation of responsibility in Smith Square. Indeed, we know, and I am sure the Secretary of State will concede, that the plans being made for agriculture in England and the policies already being implemented would not suit Scotland; they will be harmful to Scottish food producers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare). The concerns that he has expressed on behalf of his farmers about productivity and food production are echoed in my constituency. Eddisbury’s highly productive lowland farming land is responsible for producing about 3% of the UK’s dairy products, and the chances are that hon. Members will have used milk from Eddisbury in their coffee at some point this year. Indeed, they might well have woken up to a breakfast glass of milk from Eddisbury.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) talked about a green Brexit, but I would argue that that that underplays the role of past Ministers and Secretaries of State. The UK has had a strong influence on previous common agricultural policies, and we have seen the EU moving towards a greater focus on the delivery of environmental goods and services—sometimes called ecosystem services. It is good to see the UK Government continuing in that direction of travel, but not at the cost of productivity and hopefully not at the cost of innovation in the farming sector.

What concerns my farmers, particularly after this summer’s experience, is market volatility and market failure. We had some of the toughest weather conditions, with a sustained period of drought. This meant that my farmers were having to feed their winter fodder to their cattle during the summer. It took a long time, but I am grateful to the Secretary of State for negotiating a derogation with the European Union in relation to field-side margins. I ask the Minister to ensure that we use the fact that we have left the common agricultural policy to ensure that we have that flexibility and fleetness of foot when there is market failure or volatility—particularly when it is caused by extreme weather events, which we are likely to see more and more due to climate change. For example, my local farmers have suggested that the hay and wild flowers growing on field-side margins that have been designated as set-aside land could be cut and used or sold for forage, thereby reducing some of the real pressures that farmers in my constituency have felt.

The second thing that farmers in Eddisbury are concerned about is fair prices. We have all heard about mineral water in supermarkets being more expensive than a pint of milk. British farmers make fantastic produce, but they want to be paid a fair price for it. I welcome the proposals in the Bill for an obligation to promote a fair contractual relationship between farmers and the first purchasers of their products. That is a really important matter for my constituents. Finally, others have mentioned workforce planning: it is really important that we have a workforce that can help to manage those farms and take their success into the future.