Agriculture Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 15th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I shall not detain the House long. I have added my name to those of my noble friends Lord Caithness and Lord Dundee on Amendment 5, because, as has been said, it is important that we get clarification. We must also ensure that farmers and other land managers realise that the access provisions are voluntary and will not be imposed. We need to take everybody along with the new framework, and the new way of looking at how we finance our agricultural system. If land managers fear that this will be compulsory they may not take part in it. Obviously, there is a good reason why we want more access—but it must be voluntary.

I echo the thoughts of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about making paths, if possible, accessible to all, not just to what he called the hardened rambler. I also concur that there are occasions when paths and access must be curbed, for various reasons. Even nature reserves have to close paths because a bird—or some other creature, but it is normally a bird—has decided to nest right by them, and the last thing it needs is a lot of people walking past. I hope that the Minister can give us the clarification that we desire.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge. I offer the Green group’s support for Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb will speak on other amendments, so I shall confine myself to this one. Amendment 2 has multiple benefits. As the noble Earl explained, it would improve the clarity of the Bill, with “health and wellbeing” being measurable and quantifiable terms rather than the—if I may say so—rather woolly drafting of “enjoyment”.

This also helps us to come to terms with the rest of the debate and to set out clearly what the Bill is trying to achieve. We need our countryside to provide multiple services for us. In terms of our health and well-being, we need a great improvement from our present diet, to one packed with fruit and vegetables. We also need widespread broadly available leisure opportunities, and we need to look after the health and well-being of the natural world so that it can maintain biodiversity and bio-abundance, store carbon, prevent flooding, provide clean water, et cetera.

The economy is a complete sub-set of the environment, and ours is in a parlous state, as the RSPB reminded us this week with its reflections on our “lost decade for nature”. There is a context to the Bill involving contesting views, summed up as “sparing versus sharing”. The idea behind sparing is that we trash much of the land—the soils, the biodiversity and the waters—but we leave some of it, in its still surviving or restored state, as pristine as possible. Spare some, and the devil—or the agrochemical companies—take the rest.

Sharing involves looking after all our land—the soils, the wildlife, the air and the water. Those are things that everybody needs around them all the time for health and well-being—rural and town residents, visitors, and those who eat the food that comes from them. That is, as the noble Earl’s amendment says, for their health and well-being. An occasional visit to a specially protected treasured area will not deliver health and well-being if the rest of our countryside is trashed.

When we reach Amendment 78 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and consider the damage done by pesticide application, this will all come into acute focus. Amendment 2 gives us a chance, in the early stages of the Bill, at the start of today’s debates, to set out a crucial understanding of how our health and well-being, and our future, depend on looking after every inch of our environment. If we live in a healthy land, we will have a healthy society.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

I too thank the Minister for the timeliness and succinctness of the brief we have received. As we will be on this subject for a while, I had better declare an interest, in that I own woodland, which is managed by a professional and with the agreement of the Forestry Commission. And if anything comes up about horticulture, Bedfordshire is part of the heart of the horticultural world, so I will be interested in that.

We should pay tribute to the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I too worried about “enjoyment” for a while and wrestled with it but could not think of anything better at the time. Then I found that he had produced something very helpful, which gives precision. In law, precision is very important, so I hope the Minister will consider it.

I say that particularly because I happen to have some footpaths close to where I live and, as my noble friend will be aware, there is a new hobby of flying drones, which is not necessarily for the enjoyment of anybody other than the person flying the drone. Certainly, if people are walking along a footpath and find somebody else in the middle of the path flying a drone—which is allegedly, but not actually, flying within sight—that is not to the enjoyment of anyone at all.

On Amendment 4, which is the other one that caught my eye, there is no doubt that “accessibility” is vital. There cannot be a Member of your Lordships’ House who has not taken a walk along a footpath and found either a stile broken, something overgrown or another hazard that has appeared, so it is vital. I am slightly worried, though, in that some years ago I experienced that a section of the “rambling community” had gone back to the original maps showing where the closed footpaths were. Those had been closed whenever it was, legally et cetera, but there was then a move to open them up again. There may be a case for opening some of them, but it seems to me that that campaign does not fit with what we require today. However, I come back to the point that accessibility is vital. New public access is much more difficult in today’s world, and I think one has to tread very carefully in that area.

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[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Dundee. I thank him for introducing my Amendment 16 so eloquently. He has done a brilliant job and it reduces much of what I have to say.

It is quite clear that when nature suffers, we all suffer. That is why I believe that nature-friendly farming should be front and centre of the Bill. When anybody coming into farming picks up such a Bill and reads it—as I did when I started way back in the late 1960s, when I read the 1947 Act—it should say that nature-friendly farming is the route forward. It is the only way that agriculture will survive in the long term.

I hope all your Lordships have read the recent Living Planet Report, which is pretty horrific reading. It says that the populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have declined by an alarming 68% since 1970. That is not all farming’s fault, but farming has been a contributor to that decline. For that reason I welcome subsections (a) to (j), but nature-friendly farming should also be in the Bill. I chose to insert it at this point because of its importance. In Committee it was an amendment after (j), but I thought it deserved a paragraph of its own.

I will correct one myth that seems to perpetuate in some quarters: that you cannot farm successfully and profitably if you also farm for nature. Many farmers have signed up to the Nature Friendly Farming Network, but I also draw the House’s attention to the amazing work of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Allerton Project, which I know my noble friend the Minister knows about. It has done years of research on this subject and proved time and again that farmers can improve yields, output and productivity at the same time as improving biodiversity and wildlife on farms.

I will take one example in conclusion: the grey partridge, which is mentioned in the Living Planet Report. There has been a huge decline in this country, of some 85%, in the grey partridge population since 1970. The work of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust has proven that farmers can get the grey partridge back in large numbers, as well as being successful and profitable. I commend that template to all farmers and to the House. I hope that when my noble friend the Minister implements ELMS, he will bear that very much in mind.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has already addressed the Green group’s support for a number of amendments in this group. I will not repeat that, but I will address a number to which I have attached my name, starting with Amendment 8, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, which focuses on the whole-farm agroecological and agroforestry systems. I thank him for tabling it, and the noble Earls, Lord Dundee and Lord Caithness, for supporting it.

It is clear that the age of industrial monoculture has given us the dreadful condition of our countryside that the noble Earl addressed in his speech. Its waters are polluted and its soil degraded, and biodiversity is in collapse. Yet, at the same time, we have a public with an awful diet and poor health. We need a whole new approach. Actually, agroecological farming is the only kind of farming we should see, with whole-farm systems. Agroforestry is a crucial part of that: trees sheltering animals, holding water, storing carbon, supporting biodiversity, and producing healthier food, including fruits and nuts, and healthier and more varied fodder for livestock. We need the Government to support this transformation, although ultimately that needs to be how all our land is managed.

We have already seen a significant move across most of the farming sector in its approach to soils. It has been a rediscovery of the understanding that the natural facility of soils depends on a flourishing ecosystem of microscopic animals, plants and fungi. I hope the Minister will think about this: I continue to hope that the Government will sort out the Bill’s description of fungi to make it scientifically literate—it currently is not—following the issues I raised in Committee, which are in no way political. They merely seek to ensure technical accuracy. When we focus on agroecology and, indeed, agroforestry, we need to move towards crop diversity. That is part of whole-farm varied systems. It means a system that works with nature, rather than trying to cosh it into submission.

I move to Amendment 9, to which I have also attached my name, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and backed by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. We have almost lost track of the fact that this is the Agriculture Bill. We are talking about environmental elements, but agriculture is also about food. We need joined-up thinking and systems thinking. There is really no point in producing more sugar, which the world has and consumes far too much of and does massive damage to rich and valuable soils. By contrast, growing fruit and vegetables is a super-policy—the kind of thing the Government should support and which they will have to, if they are to have regard to health and well-being policies.

Amendment 20, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, focuses on peri-urban land. I have probably done this myself: in the Bill we talk about the countryside, but fringe areas and patches of land in cities, towns and villages that might be quite small are crucial for environmental benefits and healthy food production. I am sure the Minister is aware of an excellent article from 2019 published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, which found that allotments and gardens often had 10 times more bees and other pollinators than even the rich environments, as we regard them, of parks, cemeteries and urban nature reserves. Increasing allotment use and food growing can be a positive sign for nature and, of course, for people.

I also express support for Amendment 6 on food security, to which Amendment 20 relates. Relying on the market to supply us with food has given us a dreadfully unhealthy diet, as the impact of Covid-19 has sadly demonstrated—one more weakness the pandemic has exposed rather than caused. However, it is also an insecure approach to rely on the market to supply food. Hundreds of millions of people in the world go hungry now not because there is a lack of food, but because of a lack of access to it. There is enormous waste in the system, particularly factory farming, feeding what could be perfectly good human food to animals.

However, we are in the age of shocks. We have just seen harvests in the US in particular be hit hard by extreme weather. Sadly, a lot more like that is on the way. The state of soils is parlous. To assume we can just buy what we need is dangerously uncertain. There is also a moral question: why should we take food out of the mouths of people in other countries when we could and should be growing our own? Those are two powerful reasons for the Government to provide direct, clear support for food security. There can be few more foundational roles for a Government then ensuring that people do not starve.

Finally, I support Amendment 48. I note the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and I agree with them.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank everybody who put their names to Amendment 9. I have a little confession: the original intention was to discuss it in the context of the part of the Bill dealing with access, because of the idea of tying health and well-being into public legislation. It is clear, as I have already said—and nobody has argued otherwise—that if you are fit and active, you tend to have better health. However, does the amendment fit in its allocated group? Having thought about it, those organising the Bill have got it right. It fits because it ties in with the general thrust of what we are saying.

What are we doing to try to improve life for the whole planet and for ourselves together? I am afraid it sounds rather meaningless when I put it like that. The idea is that it is a whole, so we are taking something on board and relating it to other activities. If one thing is done under this Bill, it should be to ensure that we look at the whole of what we are doing. The amendment sits better in this group because we have to consider people’s health and well-being and the public good when we are putting money in. I hope that, when the Minister replies, he will not totally dismiss the idea that we should have better access to public spaces in order to undertake physical activity. However, that does not fit in with some of the other concerns being raised here about better diet and so on, because it is part of that whole.

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[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I call the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon. No? Then we will move on to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, during the dinner break, I went for a brief walk and reflected then on what feels like ancient history: my honours thesis in 1983, which was on abomasal bloat in goat kids. Your Lordships can be reassured that I am aware it is dinner time, so I will not venture further into that subject. However, one thing that emerged during that year, as I was completing that honours thesis, was that the work had received some modest support from a milk manufacturer. It had donated the supplies for the goat kids, and in return got an awful lot of free student labour and the imprimatur of a university using its product. Soon, however, we found that there was a conflict between the commercial interest of the manufacturer and that of the science. It was private profit versus public good.

My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and I have been reflecting on that again and again today. Relying on the market rather than public service’s guidance and rules has led us to the society and countryside we have today. The market will, and by law our commercial companies have to, maximise private profit. All too often, that is at the cost of public good.

A seed company, fertiliser or pesticide manufacturer, or tractor company will want to sell more of their products, but moving in the direction we are talking about—agroecology, agroforestry, looking after the land—often means reducing, and using fewer, inputs: for example, using a local tree nursery for hedges and fruits rather than a multinational seed company. Yet, so much of the advice and information that farmers have been forced to rely on over recent decades has come from those commercial sources, which do not want to head in the direction provided by this Bill. So, we have to provide an alternative source of advice.

If we look at the history of this—to where we went backwards and went wrong—we go back to 1996 and the debate in your Lordships’ House on the privatisation of ADAS. Lord Mackie of Benshie said then that charging for its services had led to less advice being requested, a shift towards commercial suppliers’ advice and a concern about how public opinion of farmers had declined. In Committee on this Bill, I put forward a modest little amendment, 234, suggesting that a service be established by means of which farmers could associate, lead research and work with the experts we have now.

I ask the Minister at some point to look back to that discussion. One interesting, original contribution came from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who developed this proposal into something like a NICE for farming. Where otherwise is the advice and support in this clause to come from? It is clear that we need a duty to provide that advice, as so many other noble Lords have said in this debate. Farmers cannot be left on their own in this fast-changing, uncertain situation. This is not just about the Agriculture Bill; so many other aspects of the world are changing—the climate emergency, for example, and different markets and economic situations. We need to develop the expertise; we need the Government to do this. I would argue that this amendment is a crucial step in that direction, and I commend it to your Lordships’ House.

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. I supported the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, on the same amendment in Committee and I continue to support him. I will not repeat my previous remarks but emphasise that, without access to funding for advice, the take-up of the proposed environmental land management schemes will be more limited. I certainly agree with the interesting hypothecation idea of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood.

Farmers will be considering new ventures of which they may have no experience, so they need funding for advice. The average farmer is not a rich man; his success is likely to have come from concentrating on what he knows best. Our capricious climate has clearly demonstrated that sticking to what you do best is a sensible policy in farming. The farmer is therefore unlikely to rush into a new scheme without considerable thought and encouragement. As mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, he is also aware that under previous schemes, including BPS, the sanction regime has been tough. So, once again, he is unlikely to move swiftly into ELMS without a great deal of thought and advice.

I raised in Committee the issue of the digital divide, which was identified by the University of Sheffield and the Institute for Sustainable Food. For many in rural areas, access to good broadband may be limited. This, together with lack of time and, perhaps, age and social isolation, has made it difficult to follow developments on the ELM schemes. All this means that it is so important to provide financial advice to farmers for training and guidance so that they can be encouraged into ELMS on the basis of knowledge and confidence.

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[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I hope that the Minister will resist Amendment 36, which would delay the start of the agricultural transition. Climate change and the biodiversity challenge are urgent, and we need to provide the financial support and the advice and guidance as soon as possible to equip farmers and land managers to tackle these challenges.

On Amendment 38, in his name, the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, admitted that he was not a great fan of organic farming in the past. I have not exactly waved a flag for it either—but he, like me, is concerned about the decline in the area of land farmed organically in the UK compared with most other developed countries. Organic production accounts for only about 2.5% of agricultural land in the UK; the EU average is 7.5%, and Austria has a whacking great 24%. Yet the UK organic market is growing like a mushroom—far faster—and we are sucking in imports as a result. UK farmers are basically missing out on the growth in the organic market.

The public benefits of organic production are well attested in things like biodiversity, environmental performance and animal welfare, so growth in the organic acreage would be a good thing. What is needed is not only support for the organic transition to be enhanced into the future; it needs to be coupled with the provision of advice. It is a big step change for farmers and to do the transition well they need support. There used to be something called the Organic Conversion Information Service, but support for peer-to-peer learning would be a help.

We also need to see help with ongoing market development, as other countries have done. Using public procurement to increase the amount of organic food consumed in public settings would be an excellent thing. Copenhagen, for example, can now boast of over 80% of food consumed in public settings being organic. What support can the Minister give to organic growth?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

I support Amendment 38 in the name of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. There is really no doubt that UK performance in the area of organic conversion has been astonishingly poor, and we have not seen a will or determination from the Government to make the progress that we might have hoped for in the past but can now hope for in the future. This amendment is a very modest step in that direction.

We can only look with envy at what is happening across the channel. The EU’s farm to fork strategy aims to see a 50% reduction in the use of pesticides by 2030 and a 50% reduction in the use of antimicrobials for farmed animals and aquaculture, as well as 25% of farmland being used for organic farming—roughly 10 times as much as we have now—by 2030. We are being horribly left behind. We look at countries around the EU and see that Austria is already at 24% and Italy at 15%.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, said, one of the things our failure to support this conversion means is that we are seeing more imported food. It is often food of higher value and it is being denied to our farmers—that is, farmers do not have access to that market because they are not growing organic food.

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said that other forms of farming can be environmentally friendly and sensitive. I would certainly say that of course you do not have to be organically certified to be environmentally sensitive, but this is the only system of registration, recognition and guidance that we have for agroecology. Organic systems by definition are agroecological. Anything else is just making a claim or suggesting that it is happening. Many of us probably feel we know it when we see it when we walk into a field, but that is not the same as something that immediately pushes in that direction.

I encourage the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, to consider pushing this issue forward if we do not hear a satisfactory answer from the Minister. We need to take at least this modest step forward.

I also want briefly to express support for Amendment 42. We know that farmers, like many other small and medium-sized enterprises, can have huge problems with payments from the large companies they supply, such as multinational manufacturers and supermarkets, but they really should not be waiting for payment from the Government; they should be able to rely on that.

[Lord Judd (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the proposed legislation will inevitably cause a great deal of extra work for not only Whitehall but many farmers on the front line. They have a lot of burden and a lot of challenges; their time is scarce.

In recent years, but particularly in the context of Covid-19, we have seen the consequences of ill planning, of the rushed implementation of new measures and of promises unfulfilled, including the consequent maximum disruption. Rationalisations after the event are no substitute for all the promises at the beginning. For those reasons, there must be time for civil servants and others, and particularly farmers themselves, to prepare properly. In that context, the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, has insight and sensitivity and realises the practicalities of what is involved.

When it comes to Amendment 41, in the name of my noble friend, the same arguments that I have just applied are highly relevant. What is important about this amendment is that it sets out in detail the things that must be in place and tested. That means not just uttering words off the back of an envelope or making a press statement from No. 10 Downing Street, but ensuring that these things are tested and proven. At stake is the success of the new arrangements. That will be very important, as we do not want disruption of agriculture and total chaos for farmers. From that standpoint, I believe that Parliament has an overriding duty to make sure that it is convinced about what is proposed and that we are able to vet it and give, or withhold, our approval. This is an important amendment and I am glad to be able to support it.

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[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. I support both amendments. In the case of Amendment 43, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, I believe that, with our existing knowledge of the precarious existence of farmers—particularly in upland areas—and their importance to the physical and social landscape of their localities, it is important to be able to support them through non-production-related schemes, as many of the existing and proposed schemes may not work for them. I hate to bang on about this, but it is particularly relevant in the light of the proposed cuts to BPS—even if it is only 5% in the first year, although some of us argue about how important 5% is. There is a lack of detail about what will follow in subsequent years, and also a lack of detail on ELMS.

I see no reason why Amendment 44, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon, cannot be adopted, as it should cost the Government nothing since contributions to the RDP should already have been budgeted and, as I understand it, are expected to be rolled into the new proposed UK Shared Prosperity Fund. It is therefore just a timing issue, and correctly gives the necessary reassurances to the current RDPs.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I am in favour of both these amendments. I was just reflecting on a visit I made to a small town in south Shropshire called Clun, which was then home to what was said to be the food bank in the smallest community anywhere in the UK. I am glad that both noble Lords introducing these amendments have focused not just on the individual situations, as pressing as they often are, but on the need for communities to be assured that money is coming in. On that basis, we want a Britain where there is no need for any food banks; we should not rest until the last food bank closes due to lack of demand. In the meantime, we have to find other ways to make sure that money is going into communities that sometimes are, and have for some time been, really struggling.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, I hesitate to disagree with this amendment, tabled by my noble friend Lord Cameron of Dillington. He is godfather to my daughter and one of my oldest friends. When I say that, I mean that I have known him forever, not that he is old in age, obviously.

I understand where the noble Lord is coming from: the needs of farmers and their households, along with rural communities, must be supported through the challenges they face. Now that we have left the EU, we have the opportunity to drive enterprise and jobs by re-energising our rural areas and those who live and work in them, and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund will do just that. It will cut out bureaucracy and create a fund that invests in UK priorities and is easier for local areas to access. To that end, I know that departments are working closely together to address the challenges faced by our rural communities. I hope that the Minister can elaborate on how that will pan out, with the UK Shared Prosperity Fund being very much part of dealing with those challenges.

Importantly, the problem with the support programme suggested by my noble friend is, I believe, that it would bring unintended consequences, taking money away from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and therefore muddying the waters—which, I am sure, is not what was intended by this amendment.