Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 9th July 2020 Lords Chamber

However, if we are to build an international industry and take a part in what will be an international industry, it is important that we have strong engagement with real farmers. It is not enough to have these things driven through the R&D system. We want the wisdom, inventiveness, resourcefulness and accumulated experience of British farmers to play a part here. It ought to be that we equip farmers not just to be the customers of international R&D but to take part in and commission and be part of the push for change. I would like to see a good part of the flow, particularly for development beyond research, to come through farmers and for their choices to be what determine who gets the funding. I would like to see the Bill opened up to make that possible.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Curry, and I congratulate him on his school for kids to come to; I am sure they had a splendid time. I thoroughly endorse his amendment about education.

I add my support to Amendments 43 and 54 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. They are mostly about localisation, which also has a great part in education and the connection between citizens and food. While most of us understand that local food is a good thing, most of us have very little sense of how local food is produced. I am in Somerset; we have lots of supermarkets around and are just as divorced as you can be in a city. It can be very difficult. There are many reasons for this, but a key one is that local authorities have insufficient cash to provide the essential infrastructure to allow local food economies to flourish.

Here I divert briefly to my own experience of once running a smallholding in Somerset. We went into pig breeding and were lucky enough to have a local abattoir that dealt with our animals in a quick, precise and compassionate way. I remember being completely shocked on my first, nerve-racking trip to the abattoir, with two of my favourite pigs rattling around in the back of the trailer. We were early and had to wait, and I was amazed that outside the door to the slaughter room were four pigs happily snoozing in a companionable heap. This was as stress-free as it could be, the food miles were minimal and I was able to sell the meat in complete confidence that the animals had had a good life and a good death.

There has been a long-term decline in the number of abattoirs in this country. According to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare, there were 30,000 in 1930; that dropped to 249 in 2017, a 99% decrease. Of those, 25 are in danger of being shut. The alternative is huge abattoirs where animal welfare is low on the list and the distances need to be extensive and thus increase the stress and cost. I believe you cannot have a local food economy if you do not have a means of taking your animals to market.

I urgently recommend that the Government look at funding to restore local abattoirs within reach of most people, to ensure that we have a thriving economy. There are interesting examples globally that we could follow, such as the mobile abattoirs now introduced in France, New Zealand and Australia. We have one based in Nottinghamshire that believes its service can aid animal welfare and meat quality. It is something worth looking at.

The second thing I will talk about in support of the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is county farms. Recent investigations have shown that the number of county farms in England has halved over the last 40 years. Why does this matter? The county farm is a farm owned by the local authority and let out to young and first-time farmers, often at below the market rate. They are a vital first rung on the ladder for farmers in a sector that on the whole has incredibly high up-front capital costs—unless, of course, you are lucky enough to inherit. Through their provision of land and farm buildings, young people can become farmers. With the average age of farmers in this country at 60 and the price of land quite prohibitive, this is something we should really investigate and try to support.

Specifically, the acreage of county farms across England has plummeted from 420,000 in 1977 to just 215,000 now. For instance, Dorset Council just sold six of its county farms, 14% of its entire estate. When Michael Gove was Secretary of State for the Environment, he talked lavishly about equipping a new generation of farmers, but the facts all point in a different direction. You cannot be a farmer if you have nowhere to farm. If we value our farmers, local food and rural economies, community and county farms must not be allowed to slither into obscurity.

Finally, I will speak briefly about Amendment 47. I am a meat eater, but I want to eat meat that has been reared on pastures or in humane ways. Specifically, I do not want to eat chickens or any animals that have been grown in inhumane environments. The UK has come a long way in protecting and preserving standards of animal welfare, but there is one area in which we are not doing well, and that is local chicken production.

In the county of Herefordshire in particular, there is a rapid growth in the intensive chicken industry, which is generating a wave of vast industrial complexes across the landscape. The visual impact is not the only concern. Many environmental organisations are increasingly concerned by the growth and proliferation of these ILUs, particularly the impacts of ammonia, nitrogen deposition and phosphate on biodiversity and human health. These concerns include, but are not limited to, the pollution of water—streams, rivers and ponds. There has been news in the last few weeks of massive algae blooms in the River Wye, which are killing fish.

These chicken farms—which are owned not by British people but by global internationals—affect our health and environment. The companies, such as Cargill, contract with local farmers to put up the factories yet pay only farming rents and rates. These birds lead miserable lives and have miserable deaths, and this is something we should stop. Without a doubt, this leads to less good local practice and lower animal welfare standards. If we want to move towards a sustainable, holistic farming system in which local people can play their part, we have to work against these giant conglomerates.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and to agree with pretty much everything she has just said. I support Amendments 43 and 54 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

It is at times such as this that I realise that—although in the difficult circumstances it is highly commendable that we are operating this Committee in any sensible way at all—nevertheless, the sooner we can back to proper Committees, the better. Normally I would wait for the noble Baroness to move her amendments, then if I wanted to say something about them I would rise after her and comment. Given the hybrid Committee, I understand that the way in which we are now operating, with a speakers’ list, is essential, but it is nevertheless restrictive. I hope that when we come back in September, people will try to get back to normal Committees as quickly as possible, even if it means that a few people who are particularly restricted by Covid still have to come over the air, as it were. The basic Committee ought to be here. We also ought to be able to intervene and have a proper conversation. Committees in this House are traditionally and properly about conversations and discussions, not a series of speeches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb [V]]

My Lords, I am speaking to my four amendments in this group and I obviously heartily support Amendment 77, which was tabled by my noble friend Lady Bennett. My amendments are focused on improving animal welfare. They would also ensure that minimum standards are enforced and that no public money is given to the most harmful farming practices. Amendment 66 would prevent financial assistance being given to a number of cruel farming practices such as mutilations, including debeaking, tail docking and tooth pulling without anaesthetic. Castrating sheep with your teeth would also most definitely be included. The amendment would require publicly funded farmers to keep animals in species-appropriate numbers, not exceeding specified stocking densities or certified levels of illness and disease. Public money should not be used to support animal cruelty. That is the purpose of the amendment.

Amendments 125 and 136 would require the Secretary of State to consider animal welfare specifically when planning and reporting financial assistance. These amendments are important in putting animal welfare at the forefront of the Minister’s mind, and in ensuring that the health and happiness of our farm animals does not fall behind other priorities, such as profit.

Finally, while much of the Bill is focused on offering farmers and land managers a financial carrot, my Amendment 225 will bring a big stick for those who refuse to adopt even the most basic standards of environmental protection and animal welfare. I loathe the concept of new criminal offences, although I accept that sometimes they are necessary, and I think this is necessary. While the Government might not choose to adopt such a harsh approach as imposing criminal liability, I want at least to draw attention to the apparent lack of any plan to raise the standards of those who consistently fall behind and refuse to bring themselves up to modern standards of farming and land management. As always, I look forward eagerly to the Minister’s assurances on animal welfare and hope that he or she will specifically address what will be done about those farmers who lag behind.

[Baroness Boycott [V]]

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and all the amendments that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, just addressed. We currently have 65 billion farmed animals on this planet, and 80% of livestock is kept at the moment in various kinds of cage. That is a truly terrible thing for us all to know. They are kept in cruelty, in the main. I always say that if, as a country, we factory farmed Labradors, the whole country would grind to a halt in about two minutes. I used to keep pigs, I played football with them, and they are just as engaging as any dog.

I add my support to Amendment 77, which is about community engagement and involvement, and I want to bring to the Committee’s attention a scheme called Capital Growth, which I started when I worked for the then Mayor of London, who is now Prime Minister. We began it in 2008 with a plan to create 2,012 new community gardens in London. Now, 12 years later, we have 2,500. We have 200 acres of London that were derelict and are now growing gardens with 100,000 volunteers. I have listened today to many speeches, including the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, talking about city farms, which are much more difficult to achieve, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, talking very eloquently about rubbish. He mentioned the fact that if an environment is in decay, people do not keep it. What this scheme proved was that you can turn the most derelict area around, you can bring a community together and you can teach children, which has again been a big subject through the day. You can teach children that, indeed, spaghetti does not grow on trees, which one child said to me, or, as one noble Lord mentioned, that cheese is not a plant.

This was a cheap scheme. We spent very little money on it, it was very viable, and I hope that we can, as we run up to the climate talks in Glasgow, now postponed for a year, take this scheme countrywide. I am thrilled that the Minister for the Environment is interested and I hope, given that it is a very viable scheme and extremely cost-efficient, we can have it in every school. I have watched a school where there were 54 languages and the teacher was explaining mathematics to someone who had no English at all by holding out 12 beans and saying, “Plant these in three rows.” You can do magical things like that and I commend the scheme to the House. I am very pleased to be part of this debate and to support the various amendments, especially those around animal welfare.

[Lord Rooker [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to three of the amendments. Amendment 26, which I thoroughly support, reminds me of the situation when we went into government in 1997 and the department was MAFF; we are not talking about Defra. Jack, now my noble friend Lord Cunningham, who was the Minister, decided to split responsibility between me, on animal health in the middle of the BSE crisis, and Elliot Morley, on animal welfare. It was not creative tension, because we worked incredibly well together, but the fact is that these were two sides of the same coin—it is as simple as that. To separate them, it seemed self-evident to me, created a technical lacuna, and that should be corrected by accepting Amendment 26.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Lords Chamber

On Amendment 53, I am obviously interested in and am a keen proponent of urban, vertical and such farming types, but I wonder whether those are necessarily public goods. As I said in debate last week, many exciting agritech areas are getting lots of investment and support, all of which contribute positively to the options available to us, but I am conscious of the definition of “public goods”. I would appreciate it if the Minister could address whether such agritech products are necessarily public goods.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to be in this debate and to follow the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, Lady Meacher and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for supporting my amendment. I agree with pretty much all the amendments proposed, and agree entirely with the provision and principle of ELMS, but I want to make a few points.

Of course, we must support the environmental goods that our farming can do, but if we do that without including the need to grow healthy food, we have in a sense lost the primary reason why we farm and have given it back to the market. By that, I mean the overwhelming power of the big retail producers, which has meant that so much land has been given over to grow grains which feed animals, or grains which are highly refined and end up in un-nutritious products such as cheap white bread and that so little of our land ends up producing the nutritious fruit and vegetables that we need.

I shall give a few facts and figures. The volume of home production decreased by 1.8% in 2019 to the lowest level that we have had for 20 years, despite its value having gone up. Imports have increased as well. Home production of vegetables contributes only about 54% of the total UK food supply. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and others have talked about our food security but it is bigger than that: it is about trying to support farmers to do the right thing to support our health. Some 31,000 premature deaths in the UK could be averted every year if we ate enough fruit and veg, yet according to the Food Foundation, of which I am a trustee, UK adults currently eat an average of just 2.5 portions of veg a day.

When the previous Agriculture Bill went through its Second Reading in the Commons, Michael Gove, then Secretary of State for Defra, said:

“Every measure in the Bill is designed to ensure that our farmers receive the support that they deserve to give us … healthy food.”


When challenged on why this was not in its Clause 1, he said that

“food production in this country is critical to the improvement of public health … we put the importance of improving public health at the heart of everything that we do”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/10/18; cols. 150-51.]

In answer to another question about whether that Bill would support the production of fruit and veg, he said that it was a critical issue. I therefore consider this Bill worryingly silent when it comes to healthy food production. It has to be a matter of strategic national interest and social justice that we ensure that our country is better able to feed itself with healthy, nutritious food and to protect itself from volatility.

Sustainable production must be central to this Bill—it cannot be seen as something to be left to the market—and that, I am afraid, takes money. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, spoke about the need for allotments and more growing spaces. When I ran the London Food Board, we had a project called Capital Growth and created 2,500 new community projects. It is tremendously successful and we are trying to roll it out across the country. However, at the end of the day, it accounts for a tiny amount of vegetables. The point is that, if we are to grow more, farmers need money. At the moment, a very small amount of our land is devoted to this. We have to understand that financial help is needed, first, to make the transition and, secondly, to get this produce to the market. All the other things that I have talked about in our debates on amendments—local food networks, local abattoirs and so on—are part of the same thing.

We know that we have terrible problems with obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. These are the results of a food system which is not working for us and our citizens. We have had a policy based on food corporations. We now have a unique opportunity to take this system back into public ownership and public concern.

Healthy food is a public good just as much as our NHS, and if we had better diets we would save that amazing institution about £2 billion a year. If we ate more local and seasonal fruit and vegetables, and if we bought from local producers, we could also reduce our carbon footprint, at the same time as improving our health, our land, our mental health and the mental health of our communities, which, as every noble Lord will have seen in the last few weeks, is an issue of such importance to our country.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, has indicated that he will not speak on this group, I call the next speaker on the list, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 16th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

I acknowledge the support from all sides of the House for all that we can do to encourage climate change mitigation, but I believe that that intention is already fully provided in Bill.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I add my support for Amendment 272. I shall make a few points, while being mindful of what the Minister just said.

Healthy land is also healthy food. At the moment so much of our acreage is given over to growing grains that end up in very cheap, white, processed bread and the like. These fields are covered in chemicals. Any move that we can make in the right direction not only improves our biodiversity—agriculture is to blame for the 80% loss that has been suffered across the world—but is a win-win situation. I do not understand why the Government appear to be afraid of setting a target. We cannot make this target without agriculture being part of it; it is too big a part of our system.

Henry Dimbleby is producing a report for the Government, and I am very proud to say that I am an adviser on it. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that an interim report is coming soon. If the Agriculture Bill does not set up sufficient pillars and legislation to change the way we farm, which can then change the way we eat, Henry Dimbleby’s terrific report will not have the impact that it needs.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

I agree with everything the noble Baroness has said about healthy land meaning healthy food. The Bill is designed to do all that we can to encourage farmers to produce healthy land. We do not have a sector-specific target for agriculture because the Committee on Climate Change advised that emissions reductions would be needed in all sectors. We know that to achieve net zero more is needed from this sector, and we are looking to reduce agricultural emissions controlled directly within the farm boundary with a broad range of cost-effective measures, primarily through improvements in on-farm efficiency and land use change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a farmer and landowner, as set out in the register. I shall speak to Amendments 202, 203, 204 and 205 in my name. The basic purpose of these amendments is to set the conditions in which future delegated legislation under the auspices of this Bill is fair, transparent, responsive, proportionate and equitable.

Amendment 202, on publishing information related to producer organisation grants, seeks to delete the requirement to publish grant application decisions online. Such a requirement is disproportionate, and the publication could contain commercially sensitive information that buyers could seek to use against the producer organisation.

Amendments 203, 204 and 205 relate to competition law. I fear there are no baubles here; we begin to get technical. The Competition Act 1998 contains the following exemption in relation to agricultural products:

“The Chapter I prohibition does not apply to an agreement to the extent to which it relates to production of or trade in an agricultural product and—


(a) forms an integral part of a national market organisation;


(b) is necessary for the attainment of the objectives set out in Article 39 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union; or


(c) is an agreement of farmers or farmers’ associations (or associations of such associations) belonging to a single member State which concerns—


(i) the production or sale of agricultural products, or


(ii) the use of joint facilities for the storage, treatment or processing of agricultural products, and under which there is no obligation to charge identical prices.”


I did not write that.

As currently drafted, the Agriculture Bill removes this exemption and replaces it with exemptions relating specifically to producer organisations, associations of producer organisations and recognised interbranch organisations. In doing this, the current exemption for agreements, which is necessary for the attainment of the objectives set out in Article 39 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union—in other words, the common agricultural policy objectives—is removed. There does not appear to be any justification for the removal of this exemption, particularly during the period when the UK’s domestic agricultural policy is being developed. If an agreement between farmers is necessary to achieve the current CAP objectives, it should remain exempt from the prohibition of agreements contained in Chapter 1 of the Competition Act 1998. The removal of block exemptions from specific aspects of competition law, with no clear justification, is concerning. It is necessary to understand whether there is any objective and sensible justification for removing the existing agricultural exemption. I would be most grateful for the Minister’s comments.

[Baroness Boycott [V]]

My Lords, I would first like to add my voice to the praise of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, for Christine Tacon while she was in the role of Groceries Code Adjudicator. It is a very important role, and I would like to hear whether the Minister plans to beef it up and give her more powers.

Following what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said about animal welfare and the need for someone to look over it, it occurs to me that someone in a similar position to the Groceries Code Adjudicator, overlooking the welfare of animals with the power to fine and bring people to book, might be worth looking at.

I am here to make a brief intervention to support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, because I am a bit obsessive about fungi and feel that they are overlooked. They were once classified as plants because they come out of the soil and have rigid cell walls, but are now placed independently in their own kingdom with equal rank to animals and plants. In fact, they are nearer animals than plants.

An astonishing though not well-known fact, which I thought your Lordships might like to know, is that the world’s largest living organism is thought to be a honey fungus measuring 3.4 miles. It is across the Blue Mountains of Oregon and estimated to be 8,650 years old. Obviously, what we know better are varieties such as mushrooms, which are important to our diet and packed with vitamins and minerals. But they are also incredibly important to research. Penicillin, the foundation of all our modern medicine, comes from the fungus Penicillium. The everyday product yeast is also a fungus. While some can make you ill, they are essential in chemicals and drug manufacture. I know, as I travel to South America quite a lot, that scientists know that there is much more to discover about this amazing microscopic world.

From the point of view of the Agriculture Bill, fungi have the most enormous environmental benefit. They feed on dead organic matter, including leaf litter, soil and, of course, dead animals. They recycle 85% of the carbon from dead organic matter and release locked-up nutrients to be used by other organisms. This makes fungi completely essential to the ongoing health of our ecosystems. Sustainable life would not have a prayer without this magical, often microscopic, and too often ignored living group. This speech was to bring this to the Committee’s attention, and to say that I hope it maintains a proper place somewhere in the Bill.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 197 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and Amendment 207 in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and I thank them for their support.

Amendments 197 and 207 seek to achieve the same aim, which is to ensure proper scrutiny of the new supply chain measures being introduced under the Bill, which are to be greatly welcomed. I too congratulate and pay tribute to the Groceries Code Adjudicator, Christine Tacon, and her team for all that they have achieved under the code. The adjudicator has done a very good job in regulating the relationships between the major retailers and their direct suppliers.

However, I believe there has been a major regulatory gap in respect of relationships further upstream in the supply chain involving primary producers, the first purchasers and processors—what I refer to as the indirect supply chain. While it is good news that the Bill attempts to plug that gap, it is disappointing that seemingly little thought has been given to how the new arrangements contained in the Bill are to be governed. I understand that there have been discussions between officials and interested parties, and within those it has been suggested that for some reason the Rural Payments Agency could provide the oversight for these aspects of the Bill. I beg to differ. The RPA is not the appropriate body. It lacks the necessary skills, capacity and gravitas to be able to adequately deal with these aspects of the Bill, and is in any event sufficiently employed with its daily work.

Although the Bill is sponsored by Defra, it would be good to see a little joined-up thinking within the Government so that Defra and BEIS were on the same page in their approach to this. BEIS would like to expand the remit of the Groceries Code Adjudicator to cover these new and important provisions, thus creating one single regulator from farm to fork. I hope that Defra will hold the upper hand and ensure that supply chains are functioning well for the long-term benefit of UK citizens, and the Groceries Code Adjudicator is the right body and team to do that.

These matters were considered in a recent review of the role and remit of the Groceries Code Adjudicator, and it is disappointing that at that stage BEIS decided against an expansion of the adjudicator’s remit. However, now that Defra has identified the need in the Bill for further supply chain provisions, with which I wholeheartedly agree, it seems perfectly sensible to give responsibility for the oversight of those arrangements to a body that is tried and tested and already has skills and expertise in this area. Without an adequate regulator identified in the Bill, we run the risk that the provisions on supply chains will simply not be adequately administered or enforced. As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, those who have co-signed Amendment 207 and I have identified, the Groceries Code Adjudicator is the right place for this work to be conducted.

With regard to the wider remit, there are many reasons to include the indirect supply chain. More often than not, they are small growers or producers. It is very difficult for them to bring a complaint. I would like to see an own-initiative investigation started by the Groceries Code Adjudicator because it is difficult to rely completely on complaints from small producers and growers, which can so easily be identified with those with whom they have the contract and so fear losing the contract. With those few words, I commend Amendment 207 and support Amendment 197.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st July 2020 Lords Chamber

Going back to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, we believe that there is an important future, particularly for new entrants, and we must consider how to ensure that new entrants come along. I am mindful of what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, said, but that new entry route is very important and is continuing work. On that basis, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, this has been a fantastically interesting debate and I very much support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and many others to do with county farms and the length of tenancies, especially what the Minister was just saying about the variety of agriculture.

However, there is a gap here: urban agriculture. When I ran the London Food Board, which I began in 2008, we started a scheme called Capital Growth to create community gardens in London. The plan was to create 2,012 by 2012, which we did and, in fact, today —I have just checked on the website, where you can type in your postcode to find your nearest garden—we have 2,553 community gardens covering about 250 acres of London and producing £288,000 worth of produce every year.

The thing about urban agriculture is that, for a kid growing up in an urban school on an estate in a poor area, the idea of ever being a farmer is as remote as me thinking I could go to the moon. It is not just that they would not be a farmer; there would be nobody who had a father who was a farmer. Therefore, the introduction of community gardening is vital, not only in educating people but in helping them take the first step on the way to becoming growers and custodians of the land and setting up small businesses. Because I visited so many, I know that many supply restaurants and supermarkets. There are wonderful places where they grow hops and make their own beer, which becomes an industry. Even in these tiny spaces, you can do this.

The social benefits are dramatic—the police, doctors and community leaders all favour this—but it is also extremely cheap, and it means that people get an education about growing. I have listened to almost all of this debate and, all the way through, we have talked about agriculture as though it can happen only in the country. That is not so; it is a fact that it can happen in cities. You see it towns such as Incredible Edible Todmorden, and in schools. I have a proposal in with the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, who is very enthusiastic. I would very much like the Minister’s support for us to take this project countrywide. It is good for your health, it teaches you to grow food and it is fantastic for the environment.

I will share one small detail. There are hives all over London. At one point, we had more hives than we could supply with flowers, but then we balanced that up. A study was done in Paris about the honey that is produced there—96 different flowers went into the taste of that honey. We held annual honey competitions, and we had honey that went from almost clear, or almost white, through to something that looked like treacle. You could tell the honey that had come from the lime trees in particular parks. It gave people an enormous sense of belonging, and put people on the first step to agriculture. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb said that councils should have allotments. We realised a year and a half in that an allotment was an impossibility because, when you get an allotment, you are saying that the land must be there in perpetuity. We had “meanwhile leases”, which means they can be taken back; that would be a great way forward.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I believe that the noble Baroness made a speech rather than asking a question but I have noted it all. I approve of gardening, community gardening and the production of food.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Northbrook]

My Lords, I rise to support the general principle in this group of amendments of more regular reports on food security, although I am not sure whether they should be yearly or three-yearly.

I wish to speak to my Amendment 165 to Clause 17, concerning the

“Duty to report to Parliament on UK food security”.

My amendment fine-tunes the wording of subsection (2), stating that the data analysed in the report “must”—rather than the vague word “may”—include the matters covered in paragraphs (a) to (e). A number of amendments already tabled relate to reporting on food security. Given the period of uncertainty ahead for farmers as we leave the single market and customs union and strike up new trade deals, this reporting should be much more frequent than once every five years. Given the importance of a domestic food supply, it is paramount that the Government re-examine this aspect of the Bill through the lens of the coronavirus crisis. This amendment is an important addition, ensuring that all the matters listed in subsection (2) are included in that food security report when it is produced.

[Baroness Boycott [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 166. In doing so, I thank its supporters, the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. I also support everything just said by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. I was lucky enough to sit on the House of Lords committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, which found many cracks and flaws in the food system.

My amendment looks not just at food security, as I want to consider household food security. Sufficient food nationally does not mean that individual households can access it in sufficient quantity, let alone that it is sufficiently healthy food, as pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. Since April 2019, the Government have been measuring food insecurity as part of their Family Resources Survey. This data will be available early next year. The Food Standards Agency also collects data on household food insecurity, as part of the Food and You survey. Both surveys are internationally recognised and peer reviewed.

In essence, the Government are already doing this; they are collecting the data on which this amendment would have them report. So, this is not an onerous amendment—it is very simple and cost-neutral. The Government are already doing the work. My amendment simply asks that the information be regularly laid before Parliament. If we do not accept this amendment, the Government will be sending a clear message to the millions who struggle to access healthy food that their hunger and problems are not a priority.

We know that more that 2,000 food banks have become embedded in our welfare system. Even before the pandemic, millions in the UK were food insecure. Now, millions more have joined them. Covid-19 has seen food insecurity levels more than double. Refusing to report to Parliament on food insecurity at a household level lets that problem remain hidden. It is only by knowing the true scale of UK hunger that we can start to mitigate it. We should do this annually because unless you measure something, you cannot change it. In a country as rich as ours, no one should go to bed hungry. Accepting this amendment, which is cost-neutral and simple, would demonstrate that the Government are willing to treat the systemic and worsening problem of food insecurity—in a family, every night, in their kitchen—with the seriousness that it deserves.

[Baroness Parminter (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to be speaking between the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, with whom I sat on the House of Lords committee that produced the report Hungry for Change, about which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and other noble Lords have been so complimentary.

I speak in support of my Amendment 169 in this group. I am grateful for the support of other noble Lords who have added their names to it. It addresses how, if we are to be food secure in this country, we need to ensure that the minimum amount of food is wasted—yet, in the list of data that will be provided in the food security report to inform policy thinking on our future resilience and food security, there is no mention of food waste.

There are currently significant levels of on-farm food waste in this country. In 2019, WRAP estimated that about 3.6 million tonnes of food is surplus, and waste occurs on farm every year. That is equivalent to about 7% of the total annual UK food harvest. There is huge potential to reduce the amount of surplus and waste by promoting best practice, with new insights being good for growers, businesses, the climate and feeding our people.

One of the priority areas in Clause 1 of the Government’s Environment Bill is resource efficiency and waste reduction. We need better synergy between the Environment Bill and the Agriculture Bill, and a way to achieve that is for us to see where the main problems with food waste are in the supply chain. To do that, we need the data to cover each part of the supply chain. My amendment would provide for that, so that we have a food security report that does the job that we need it to do.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th July 2020 Lords Chamber

None of us knows the outcome of these negotiations. At this late stage, we are still in a state of uncertainty and confusion. Our fellow citizens and our businesses are being massively and adversely affected by this paralysis, in addition to the terrible Covid tragedy. It is our duty to enact this clause to ensure that the Government fulfil their commitments.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I echo the thanks for the Ministers’ patience and the brilliance of the technicians who have helped so much in these last weeks. I will speak in support of Amendment 276 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and Amendment 279 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Curry.

On Amendment 276, I add only that any treaty or trade agreement that we enter into obviously must take into account our goal of net zero. It seems ridiculous that we should countenance anything else. On Amendment 279, I am very pleased to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Curry, says about the new Trade and Agriculture Committee. I have read it described as a fig leaf and a trojan horse. The RSPCA said:

“We fear this industry-heavy commission will not have animal welfare at its heart”.


I urge the Government to support this amendment, which seeks to beef up the role, status and longevity of the new commission.

After listening to this debate and realising how much agreement there is and that everyone knows that we cannot let our food standards slide, I want to bring into play one other factor. A report from the Nature Friendly Farming Network survey last week said that 96% of people want higher environmental standards to be a key requirement of all future trade deals, to combat the threat of cheap imports. What thought have the Government given to the court of public opinion? There can be little doubt that the majority of this House and many in the other place who supported Neil Parish believe that we should retain our current standards in all our trade deals. However, we are not the only people who matter.

For the record, when I was editor of the Daily Express and Monsanto was poised to move into Britain, having done secret deals with many of our seed companies, I joined forces with Malcolm Walker, the founder and owner of Iceland. We ran a huge public campaign that defeated Monsanto’s endeavour. I am not against genetic modification across the board, but we were against Monsanto’s bullying tactics, which seemed to threaten the stability and independence of our Parliament. This campaign gathered force across the left, the right and the centre and in the end, Monsanto was stopped.

Our Government gave a manifesto commitment to uphold our standards and I believe that they will be taken aback by the level of public anger towards the end of this year. There are very few people—pretty much no one, as far as I can see—who actually want to do anything to jeopardise our food standards. It seems an extraordinary irony that our Prime Minister should yesterday have launched an anti-obesity strategy and an encouragement to get us all to eat healthier, better and fresher food, and tomorrow Henry Dimbleby launches the first draft of his food report, also commissioned by the Government, yet the Government are suggesting that we might adopt lower food standards which will harm not just our farmers but our health, our planet, the animals who live on it and the environmental standards for which so many people have fought for so long. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, where will this cheaper food end up? He is right that it will be in cheaper stores and chicken shops, which will only add to the health inequalities which have such an impact on Covid survival rates. This is not joined-up government thinking—quite the contrary.

We should never be a country that, in the words of my noble friend Lord Curry, exports its cruelty to others. We should not be the buyers of products that have necessitated cutting down rainforest, sentencing pigs to live in farrowing crates or chicken to lie in their own excrement for their whole miserable little life. If we fail on these amendments, we should be ashamed, but your Lordships should rest assured that nothing short of a legally binding agreement will satisfy the British public.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe [V]]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. Like her, I thank the Minister, my noble friend Lady Bloomfield and the Bill team for their patience and productivity. We need to complete Committee today, so I will be brief and confine myself to expressing doubts about Amendment 270. I am looking forward to hearing from my noble friend the Minister, but I think that this amendment and some of the others in this group would in practice lead to problems in trade negotiations in a way that would cause insurmountable problems of compliance with the World Trade Organization. I cannot see a way around this. Noble Lords do not pay enough attention to the importance of trade, wherever it takes place, at a time when we face recessionary shock. We must tread a careful path.

Since the Bill was first presented in the other place, the Government have gone a long way. They have established the Trade and Agriculture Commission, which was launched publicly today, and as Red Tractor is involved in its work, I should again register my interest as its chair. It is a victory for the farming unions which fought for it. It is a well-judged move by the Secretary of State for Trade to get it off the ground quickly in time to provide a sounding board and have an impact on current trade negotiations. In these circumstances, I really cannot see the value in the proposal before us today.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott 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 Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a landowner, arable farmer and NFU member. I am speaking to and, subject to the Minister’s response, planning to move Amendment 12, as well as speaking to Amendment 17. These amendments support domestic agriculture to ensure that food security and the stability of food supply are included in the purposes to which financial assistance can be directed under Clause 1.

According to the NFU, 21 August was the notional day on the calendar that would see the UK run out of food if it relied solely on UK produce. It states:

“The nation is only 18% self-sufficient in fruit, 55% in fresh vegetables and 71% in potatoes. For both veg and potatoes, this has fallen by 16% in the past 20 years.”


As I understand the figures, 30% of our food comes from the EU. Supermarkets are fine at the moment, but just imagine a scenario if the UK fails to get a trade deal with the EU so that nothing is agreed on fishing rights, and then French fishermen decide to blockade Calais. That could leave the UK really struggling in obtaining particular food items.

The coronavirus crisis has shown how important it is to have a domestic supply of food. The view of farmers as food producers has never resonated more with the public than at this time, with the need to keep our shelves stocked the highest of priorities. I welcome the fact that the Government recognised that food production role by granting farmers key worker status during the countrywide lockdown. However, I believe that, unless the Government change their post-Brexit immigration policy, there may not be enough workers to gather UK fruit and vegetables in particular, already in short supply, as mentioned.

Given the increased significance of food security in the UK, Amendment 12 in particular would enable the Government to give financial assistance for the explicit purpose of supporting the domestic production of food. After the original Bill barely mentioned food, there is a considerable improvement in this new one. In Clause 1 at present, in developing new forms of financial assistance, the Bill states that the Government

“must have regard to the need to encourage the production of food by producers in England and its production by them in an environmentally sustainable way.”

However, in my view that wording needs strengthening, as the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, has said, hence particularly my Amendment 12.

In reply to Amendment 12 in Committee, the Minister stated, if I understood him correctly, that food production does not need financial support because that comes to the farmer by way of profit from the sale of his produce. While that will be the case in some areas, that argument does not cover the situations where dairy farmers have been selling their milk at a loss; where hill and lowland farmers could suffer hugely from the loss of their BPS and a delay in introducing ELMS; or where farmers would like financial support to develop new crops or new processes for growing crops, particularly when these take some years to come into profit.

On Amendment 17, the Minister stated in her reply that

“Clause 4 already places a requirement on the Secretary of State to consider in as much detail as considered appropriate each financial assistance scheme that is in or will be in operation during the plan period. If deemed appropriate, this could include how the scheme is to give regard to the production of food in an environmentally sustainable way.”—[Official Report, 16/7/20; col. 1848.]


I accept that explanation and will not be moving Amendment 17.

Some Peers have said that this amendment is trying to do the same thing as Amendment 58. Amendment 58, while totally valid in its own right, is about a national food strategy, which is a perfectly valid plan, but my Amendment 12 is about the provision of financial assistance in order to promote the domestic production of food. It would give the Secretary of State total flexibility on how that was done; it could be through the findings of the food security report in Clause 17.

In summary, I do not think this is a particularly controversial amendment; it is non-party-political, it is supported by the NFU and it need not affect support for environmental measures. I will listen carefully to the Minister’s reply to Amendment 12, but I am strongly minded to move it to a vote.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am happy to be part of the debate on this group. I agree with almost all the sentiments that have been expressed, especially by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, as well as by the Green Party.

I am speaking today particularly to support the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. One thing that has not been talked about enough is the role of farmers. If the Bill is to do what I think everyone sitting in the Chamber and who is part of this debate at the moment wants to do, which is to ensure that healthy, affordable food is grown on our land and that our land becomes environmentally sustainable and healthy again, then we need a new generation of farmers, but the facts are pointing in a different direction.

The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, mentioned briefly that in 2017 one-third of all UK farmers were over 65. Almost more worrying than that is that, since 2005, those in the 35 to 44 age group have decreased. However, evidence from surveys points to people wanting to farm and to be involved in growing at a local level, on a big level and on a small level. But how are they going to do it? Land is too expensive and they struggle to scale finance and cover the high start-up costs. Responses to the Landworkers’ Alliance survey indicated that 61% of people responding to surveys wanted to access land, 46% needed finance and 54% struggled to access training. All believed that an average grant of around £20,000, which is not a fortune, would really set them on the road.

Another route for the young farmer is also being closed because of poor funding to local councils. Recent investigations have shown that county farms in England have halved in the last 40 years. This is a crisis. If we do not have farmers, particularly young farmers, then everything that we are talking about is not going to happen. When Michael Gove was Secretary of State for the Environment, he talked lavishly about equipping a new generation of farmers, but I am afraid the facts are now pointing in the other direction. You cannot be a farmer if you have nowhere to farm. If we value our farmers then we have to make some changes. With the right kind of investment and the right help, a lot of people could join our cause.

The other big issue is food security and local food. I mention briefly that for 10 years I ran the London Food Board. We instigated a scheme called Capital Growth, which enabled up to 100,000 people to have access to community gardens. In the process, we turned over 200 acres of London into small community farms where people could join in. We are now looking to take that scheme countrywide, but we need grants for that and land needs to be made available.

My final point is covered by the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and concerns training. In my years in London, I spent a lot of time in schools. It strikes me that, unless you are at a public school and the idea of a farm, as something possible, is somehow in your blood, you do not even think about it. I spent seven days, as many of us did, watching the debates on the first stages of the Agriculture Bill. I am absolutely guilty of this myself, but it was quite noticeable that the people who feel invested in the Agriculture Bill tend to be white and middle-aged, and an awful lot of us own land and are quite well off. It seems to me that we are missing a great trick in terms of diversity.

This Agriculture Bill belongs to all of us. It is about our land, our food, our health and our environment. Unless we take some steps to try to change the lack of diversity, we will head towards a greater separation between town and countryside. People have talked about litter being dropped, and there will be more of that because people do not feel that the countryside is theirs and that it belongs to all of us. Schemes that enable people in inner cities to grow vegetables on rooftops, under pylons and in sneaky little corners can really start to change attitudes. It is fantastically cost-effective, and I urge the Minister to look at this as the Government move forward.

In the meantime, I am very pleased to be part of this debate and to see agroecology and food security registering so high up among people’s concerns.

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, once again, I declare my interests, as set out in the register, as a farmer and landowner. I am very pleased to follow my noble friend Lady Boycott, as many of the points that I will make are complementary to hers.

My support for Amendment 11, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, is wholehearted. It involves the whole essence of the Bill, the aim of which is to take an important and profitable industry into a new era of post-CAP farming in this country on a sustainable and environmentally friendly basis.

The encouragement and support for commercial farming through productivity grants and the funding of ancillary activities are clearly stated, alongside the development of attractive environmental land management schemes—although I fear that the details are still unavailable, so we must put our trust in the Government delivering this. However, what is largely missing is support for new entrants into the industry, other than through encouraging some perhaps more elderly farmers to retire by offering them the balance of their basic payments. Although this will free up some land for new entrants, it is in itself not wholly positive, in that the land so freed up will go to the next farmer with no basic payment to cover the transition period. I fear that the most likely home for this land will be with neighbouring farmers or investors who enter farm contracting arrangements with large farm operations. The small farmer and the new entrant is likely to be squeezed, particularly as he is unlikely to have the financial backing that is available to established farmers and the outside investor.

That is why this amendment is so important. It enables the Bill to provide finance for young farmers and new entrants, who are very important to the industry if it is to grow and develop. These people will, unless extraordinarily fortunate, not have easy access to finance, as they will not have the assets and other security to offer banks and other lenders. Buildings, machinery, equipment and livestock are all expensive. As the land may well be held through a tenancy or other time-limited arrangement, obtaining a loan on acceptable terms will be difficult—hence the need to make it attractive for landowners to let land to such new entrants.

In addition, access to training is key if we are to encourage and help develop new entrants into the industry. The addition of this small paragraph in the purposes for providing financial assistance will help the industry to offer an attractive farming business proposition to those aspiring to a career in it, independent of established farm businesses that might not be able to offer them the same prospects. It also has substantial application to the tech-savvy who see a future in small, capital-intensive farming but who lack land and buildings.

I also support Amendment 12, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, as it clearly sets out the very purpose and essence of the Bill.

Finally, I support Amendment 20, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, as it recognises that with changing circumstances, such as limits on movement caused by disease and of course new technology, peri-urban land becomes increasingly relevant to agriculture, horticulture and sometimes trees.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 17th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I thank those noble Lords who have supported my amendments and also the Minister, who has been listening long and hard to all of this. I feel that the Government have come a long way on the issue.

Household food insecurity is very different from national food security and we should measure both. I should say that measurements of household food insecurity are already being taken. The Family Resources Survey does this as a part of its work every year while the Food Standards Agency collects data on household food insecurity as part of the Food and You survey. These measurements are being made and while I realise that taking them every year seems like a lot, if you are hungry, three years will seem like an extremely long time.

Quite frankly, if you are poor and cannot afford to buy food, it does not matter to you if the supermarkets of Chelsea and Westminster happen to be well stocked for those who have enough money in their pocket. The Trussell Trust produced a report this week saying that by Christmas, it reckons that 670,000 more people will be coming to food banks as the furlough scheme is lifted. We have a great deal of household insecurity, which can lead to incalculable damage.

I thank the Government for this amendment and I support it, but I would like to keep the channels open. People cannot wait three years to find out whether the food system is going to be made better for them and their children.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 52 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and then to Amendment 57 tabled in my name. I am grateful for the way in which the Minister has listened closely to the House and brought forward amendments. This is immensely helpful. On Tuesday, several noble Lords rehearsed the reasons we need the highest levels of food security possible, and I will not repeat those arguments now. Although I agree that this is a difficult call, my personal view is that annual reporting would be preferable. Nevertheless, I shall listen carefully to the arguments as they are made.

On Amendment 57, while I welcome the Government’s commitment to produce a regular report on food security, it is vital that this is a means by which Her Majesty’s Government can express their policy targets and mechanisms to address any issues in this area. Currently, the provisions in the Bill envisage a fairly static output that merely reports on the current food security situation rather than a more dynamic report which seeks to set out an agenda for change where change is required. There is little point in the Government merely producing a report of which Parliament is required to take note; we need a platform for evaluation, repurposing and, of course, to inform future actions. At the very least, it will be essential to ensure that food security targets are both met and monitored. Where the report indicates that there are issues with aspects of our food and environmental security, the Government must come forward with their plans and policies for addressing those shortcomings.

This amendment would provide the necessary architecture for the Government to take the matter forward and ensure responsibly that the UK is adequately prepared for any future uncertainties. It would be a failure if, having taken the time to consider the importance of having a food security report, we do not also ensure that it is used to inform changes in policy and procedures. A statutory requirement for Her Majesty’s Government is needed to address these issues and it needs to be included in this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Krebs (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and his officials for spending time yesterday in discussion with all four of us who have signed this cross-party amendment. Amendment 58 seeks to put into the Bill something that the Government are already committed to doing. The Government have said that they are

“committed to ensuring our food system delivers safe, healthy, affordable food for everyone, regardless of where they live or how much they earn, and which is built on a sustainable and resilient agriculture sector.”

This is precisely the purpose of the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, spoke eloquently a few moments ago about the nature of our food system. He anticipated a number of points that I will make in my short introduction.

The amendment would ensure that the Government put in place policies that will, in combination, help to tackle the dreadful burden of ill-health in this country that is caused by poor diet, particularly among the poorest in society. The Covid-19 epidemic has brought the cost of obesity into stark relief. The Government have spoken of it as a wake-up call. The new obesity strategy, launched on 27 July, is a very welcome step and an acknowledgment of the crisis we are facing.

The amendment would also ensure that our food system is more environmentally sustainable, underpinned by the latest science, while supporting farmers by encouraging local food, where appropriate. The fact that this country is one of the most depleted in the world in its biodiversity shows how unsustainable we have been up to now. I anticipate that the Minister will say in his reply that the Government have commissioned Henry Dimbleby to prepare a report on the national food strategy and are committed to publishing a White Paper within six months of his final report, and that this amendment is therefore unnecessary. However, this process may well take us into mid-2022. Any actions that follow would not only be uncertain; they might not arise until some distant future.

Fixing the failures in our food system is too urgent for further delay. If the disagreement is about not whether but when, let us get on with it now. Neither the children whose lives will be blighted by ill-health from unhealthy foods nor the environment that is being damaged by food production can wait any longer. I will listen carefully to the debate and the Minister’s reply but if he is not able to give a commitment to act sooner rather than later, I will wish to test the opinion of the House. I beg to move.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and it has been an enormous pleasure to serve on the committee of which he was the chair. I think that our report has been invaluable and is extremely thorough, and I know that, like him, we are a little disappointed by the Government’s reaction. However, also like him, I very much thank the Minister for the time he has spent with us.

It is roughly 12 years to the day since I began work as the chair of the London Food Board—appointed by our current Prime Minister, in fact. I have worked for many years in this area: I have loads that I could talk about and loads of things that I have done. However, despite all the effort of so many people working across the sector—charities, Governments, think tanks, consultancies, agencies, doctors and health departments—the situation has not got better. Actually, it has got worse.

Next week, the Food Foundation—of which I am a trustee—publishes the updated version of its annual publication, The Broken Plate. It makes for terrible reading. I will give the House just a few snapshots. Within food advertising budgets, out of a rough spend of around £300 million, 14% is spent on soft drinks, 17% is spent on confectionery, 17.7% is spent on snacks and just 2.9% is spent on fruit and veg. The poorest 10% of households would need to spend 76% of their disposable income to meet the Government’s recommended diet, the “eatwell plate”. Since last year, this has risen by over 2%.

If you are a baby born today, these are your life chances with the system we now have. At age five, 13% will be overweight and 9% will be obese. At age 21, 21% will be overweight and 25% will be obese. However, at 65, 22% will be overweight and a staggering 57% will be obese, and they will have a range of illnesses: diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancers and osteoporosis, as well as really bad teeth.

Why on earth do we let this carry on? I have been asking myself this question repeatedly for 12 years. I have also been involved in many measures to fix it: little moves that perhaps make something a bit better; bits of Sellotape over this problem or that problem. But the thing is—and this is why this amendment is so important—it is not about fixing one little thing here or another thing there; this is a system that is largely outside the Government’s control. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said on the previous group of amendments, it is a system run by a few very giant companies that have become very rich at our expense.

If you apply simple capitalism to the food system, this is what you get: sell more products made from ever-cheaper ingredients. It is easy to see it when you talk about clothes or cars, but it is also what we do with food, and these are the results we see around us. We have foods that contain chemicals, that have necessitated cutting down rainforests and that have deprived orangutans of their homes. In short, we have created a system that is out of control. What we have is the politics of the market and not the politics of health.

If we want to make proper improvements, we have to support this amendment. It is only by having a proper food strategy—one that cuts across government, involves all the departments and is treated with the serious attitude that it deserves—that we will make the proper changes that we need. When noble Lords are thinking about voting on this, I ask them to please remember that food is also the major driver of our biodiversity. That is why it belongs here in this discussion about agriculture.

It is not just that we are getting ill from our food system: insects are dying, while animals all over the world are losing their habitats. Right now, roughly 65 billion animals are sitting in some sort of cage somewhere on our planet, eating food that, as was said, often requires deforestation to make, and waiting to be killed and processed on the journey to our plates. This is a really lousy way to run such an important system. It is a tragedy, because nature gives us healthy food—amazing and extraordinary stuff. I believe that we all have a right to it, wherever we live and whatever we own. I beg noble Lords to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs.

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

My Lords, I declare my interests as a member of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission and a former chief executive of Diabetes UK.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Report stage & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Krebs (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and to support Amendments 89ZA and 93, both of which I have signed. Noble Lords have received repeated assurances from the Government that, to quote from the most recent Defra briefing note,

“in all future trade negotiations we will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards”.

With this assurance, why is Amendment 93 needed? For me, there are unanswered questions and uncertainties about the Government’s statement. I will summarise some of them.

First, the wording of the Defra briefing notes that I have just quoted avoids saying that there will be no imported food of lower standards than UK-produced food. Perhaps this is because the Government consider that imposing certain domestic standards on imports may breach WTO rules as “technical barriers to trade”. This was just discussed in great detail by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. According to the interim report from Henry Dimbleby, we are already able to import certain commodities produced in ways that would not be allowed in the UK—for instance, using neonicotinoid pesticides. It is also unclear whether the pledge that the Government make applies only to novel foods, as it refers to the future, or to existing approved foods. My first question is: what is the Government’s position?

My second question is: what is meant by food standards? Standards is a vague term that can mean different things to different people. How do the Government define it? For instance, do they include food production standards in the definition?

Thirdly, it is not clear what role the Food Standards Agency and its sister organisation Food Standards Scotland will play alongside other bodies mentioned by Defra, namely the Animal and Plant Health Agency, the Veterinary Medicines Directorate and the Health and Safety Executive. This is pertinent, as the Food Standards Agency is an independent, non-ministerial department while the other bodies are not independent—they are executive agencies, or non-departmental public bodies, directly accountable to their parent departments. Will the Food Standards Agency advise on welfare and environmental standards as well as on food safety standards?

Fourthly, the Defra statement does not say who will police production standards of imported food as it crosses the border. The Food Standards Agency and the Animal and Plant Health Agency currently check food safety and phytosanitary standards, but not production standards.

Fifthly, the Food Standards Agency will have to carry out additional duties in future. Has it been given sufficient additional resources in its baseline to carry these out? If so, who has determined the amount of extra money required?

Sixthly, and finally, the briefing says that decisions on imported foods will be taken by Health Ministers informed by the advice of the Food Standards Agency and Food Standards Scotland. What are the other factors that Ministers will take into consideration when making these decisions? The briefing implies that they will not simply follow the advice of the FSA or FSS but will take other factors into account.

It is only by supporting Amendments 89ZA and 93 that we can be sure that the Government are bound to their commitment not to import food of lower standards than our own domestic products. I look forward to the Minister’s answers to my questions but, as things stand, I will support these amendments if there is a vote and urge other noble Lords to do the same.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Lords, Lord Grantchester and Lord Krebs. I, too, thoroughly support the amendment. I apologise for my internet connection and hope that noble Lords can hear me.

Food is already in a mess, before we even contemplate lowering the standards that we have. For instance, we already know that chlorinated chicken is just the tip of the iceberg of bad food that comes into this country. I am greatly worried not just about the environmental impacts of cheap and bad food on the planet but also about its health implications. Bad food is the result of overconsumption and overproduction of processed, sugary foods, yet recently US negotiators have said that they were concerned that labelling food with high sugar content

“is not particularly useful in changing consumer behaviour”.

Anyone who has been involved in food politics knows that that is rubbish. It is like saying that labelling a packet of cigarettes as jolly good for your health is a way that will not help change consumer behaviour. This is completely contrary to over 20 years of UK policy to introduce clear, front-of-pack, traffic-light nutrition information to help shoppers easily identify which products are high in sugar, salt and fat. Reading any of the Government’s proposed new obesity strategies shows that this labelling is planned to be even clearer.

Across the world, labelling is already incredibly complicated. The industry likes it like that. It does not want things to be simple. However, there are people around the world trying to deal with this. For instance, the Health Minister in Chile recently decided that no cereal companies could use cartoons to sell their products, so Tony the Tiger disappeared, replaced by a black splodge. Children now tell their parents not to eat that cereal. If we do not set high standards, we will never be able to change things like this. We will not even be able to label sugar clearly.

I am also very worried about what will come into this country. Why on earth do we need more American biscuits? If you take a biscuit such as Tim Tams, a chocolate-covered cream biscuit, extremely like a Penguin, we will get this in spades and it will be cheaper than the Penguin, which already sells to 99.1% of households. Low-quality food is unhealthy food. It has usually meant deforestation in its production, terrible treatment of animals and, as I said the other day, there are over 60 billion of them; 80% of all living creatures on earth sit in cages waiting to be fed to us.

We have fought very hard for our high standards, and it seems quite extraordinary that at a moment of extreme crisis in health and the environment, we should even need to have this debate, let alone have the feeling that the Government might try to overrule it when this Bill goes back to the Commons. Even supermarkets are agreed that we cannot lower our standards. I listened the other day to Christiana Figueres say that we only have 10 years to get on top of the climate crisis, and that in 10 years we must cut our emissions by 50%. Food and agriculture contribute hugely to this, and if we do not have standards that look at the environmental impact, then quite frankly, we have not got a prayer. Next year, we are leading the COP. We should now be talking about achieving higher standards, not fighting to defend the ones that we already have.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, who is a leading light on the advisory panel of the Dimbleby report, which I will refer to shortly. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, for moving the lead amendment in this group. I do not intend to repeat many of the comments that have been made; he has very eloquently addressed the issues of the amendments in the names of the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, and others, which purport to fall foul of the World Trade Organization.

I shall speak initially to Amendment 90, and thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Henig, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who have been on this journey with a similar amendment in the original rollover trade Bill, on which we made a lot of progress. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, rather annoyingly, got in before me by tabling the amendment that was carried. We will discuss that further in the context of the trade Bill.

As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, said when moving Amendment 89ZA, this is an issue that consumers and farmers care passionately about. It was front and centre of the Conservative manifesto—not that I saw that—which we want to build on with this amendment, to then adopt what was originally government policy in the rollover trade Bill. I will not refer to it, but it complements Amendment 97 which follows later.

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and others, referred to part 1 of the interim report by Henry Dimbleby—I almost called him a noble Lord—in the National Food Strategy. On page 7 he refers to

“grasping the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to decide what kind of trading nation we want to be. The essence of sovereignty is freedom—including the freedom to uphold our own values and principles within the global marketplace. In negotiating our new trade deals, the Government must protect the high environmental and animal welfare standards of which our country is justly proud. It should also have the confidence to subject any prospective deals to independent scrutiny: a standard process in mature trading nations such as the United States, Australia and Canada. If we put the right mechanisms in place, we can ensure high food standards, protect the environment and be a champion of free trade.”

There we have it. We are taking back control. I applaud that in this sea change, for the first time in nigh-on 50 years, we will decide how we trade.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Ping Pong (Hansard) & Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 20th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Does anyone else in the Chamber wish to speak? No? I call the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. In my view, both are vital to our own safety: to the protection of our countryside, our health and our environment. As we know, pesticides are not benign. They are applied to our crops to kill insects and any other creature that might be around at the time. It is natural behaviour—if you deny the natural world its own food source. However, pesticides do not just kill the creatures that are feeding on the crops. They also damage us. Numerous studies document the associations between exposure to pesticides, increased incidence of respiratory problems, cardiovascular and renal diseases, as well as the ageing phenomenon, not to mention many cancers. If you are an ordinary member of the public who happens to live near a field, or a school kid in a playground that borders a field that is being intensively farmed, you are open to being occasionally sprayed by pesticides.

Let me give a tiny example. I used to live with my husband in a house that bordered an intensively farmed field. One day at the end of the year, when it was being sprayed to kill the cover crop, the wind changed. I kid you not: within an hour, the entire herbaceous border on to which the spray had come was lying in a muddy heap. It was completely destroyed. Any thought I had that there was anything healthy about these products vanished at that point.

Some 22,000 chemicals are registered and in use in Europe. In December 2018, high quality checks had been completed on 94 of them; half were declared unsafe. There are many large out-of-court settlements involving Bayer, the company that has taken over Monsanto. This leads many people to believe—cynically, some noble Lords might say, but I do not think so—that it is suppressing evidence of the chemical links between lymphomas and other common cancers. We have to protect the population from these serious and damaging chemicals. Without a doubt, we need strong mandatory levels for the areas in which they are sprayed.

I believe—and this takes me straight on to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones—that farmers have very little choice at the moment in the way that they farm. The common agricultural policy, which thankfully we are coming out of, has paid people per acre, and therefore the striving has been to produce as much as possible, probably of monocrops. The result has been, since the “green revolution” after the war, the incredible use of more and more pesticides, insecticides and fertilisers. These have had the result of weakening our soil to the point that the World Health Organization has said that, across the world, we probably only have 60 harvests left. The soils are now working only if they are given chemical additives. The amendment from the noble Baroness is therefore vital, because there are many other ways to farm. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and I found when we were doing our Select Committee on Food, Poverty, Health and Environment, a more healthy way of farming is also a more healthy way of eating.

Climate impacts are being felt across the world—you have to be blind not to see it—and our food supplies are going to be affected. We cannot keep our heads in the sand about it. Here, we have seen soil erosion, more flooding and coastal land inundation. We have also seen extreme weather—we have had it in the last year. We really cannot afford to wait. The proposed new clause provides that, by 2030, we have to start reducing emissions from agriculture, first, through better care of the soil, lower livestock emissions and reducing fertiliser; and also, crucially, by storing carbon in the land—so we need to plant trees. Soil sequesters carbon much better than anything else if left to its own devices. We must protect it, along with peat bogs.

There is so much that farmers can do if they are given the right incentives and the direction. However, we must have a target to ensure delivery. If we are to meet our Climate Change Act target for 2050, we have to get to 50% by 2030. If we do not, it will be too much for the world to take on. That means that the policies that we need must be laid down in this Parliament and the next—but primarily in this one. This amendment will complement the existing clauses in the Bill for financial support and for climate mitigation and adaptation, and it will confirm the Government’s commitment to strong action, at a time when we will be hosting COP 26 next year.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for re-tabling his Amendment 11B as Motion C1, with some modifications. This is a really important issue. Unless they are extremely foolhardy, those who are spraying pesticides have protection in the form of personal protective equipment and respirators, and they will be in filtered tractor cabs during their work. Rural residents and communities have absolutely no protection at all from the cocktail of toxic chemicals sprayed on nearby crops.

We have in past years not acted on harmful substances being used in agriculture until it is too late for some people who have suffered extreme health problems. I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, for mentioning sheep-dip, and to the noble Countess, Lady Mar. Now is the time to make this change. The other place did not feel that it was necessary, saying that existing legislation was protection enough. I do not agree. The 2009 European regulations on pesticide use have not yet all been implemented. Those relating to dwellings are not scheduled to be carried over after 1 January next year. The Government are now quoting the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985 to deal with the gap. That legislation is 35 years old and had not been referred to during previous stages of the Bill, nor in discussions with officials. At the same time, there is evidence of serious harms from pesticide chemical exposure resulting in out-of-court settlements due to cancers.

This proposed new clause is crucial for securing the protection of rural residents and communities from agricultural pesticides, especially the most vulnerable groups, such as babies, children, pregnant women, the elderly and those who are already ill or disabled, none of whom should ever have been exposed to these toxic chemicals in the first place. The petition to the Prime Minister and the Defra Secretary calling for this proposed new clause to be included has over 12,000 signatures, the majority of which are from affected rural residents. The petition has been supported by several prominent figures including Hillsborough QC Michael Mansfield, the Prime Minister’s own father Stanley Johnson, Jonathon Porritt, Gordon Roddick and the Defra non-executive board member Ben Goldsmith, among others.

All the arguments have been made previously. I remain convinced that this amendment should be on the face of the Bill as the only way to properly protect the public. If the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, wishes to test the opinion of the House, we will support him.

I turn now to Amendment 17B proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, in Motion F1. Again, the ethos of the amendment has been thoroughly debated in all previous stages of the Bill. This is a matter which has moved rapidly up the political and non-political agendas. The country has signed up to the Paris Agreement, and the Committee on Climate Change has thrown its weight behind moving towards achieving the country’s 2050 target. As I have previously said, an interim target of 2030 is vital to monitoring progress and ensuring delivery. Agriculture has an important part to play in reducing emissions.

I have not yet read the Government’s response to the Committee on Climate Change, but I am very disappointed by the news that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has brought to us about what it says. It is not just we unelected Lords who are concerned about this; the public are very concerned about climate change and the effect it is having on our land and shores. Sir David Attenborough wants us to act; the Duke of Cambridge wants us to act. We must act to give a strong message to the Commons that they must act now—not in 40 years’ time, but now. This amendment should be on the face of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I served on the House of Lords Select Committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs—the Food, Poverty, Health and Environment Committee. Many things struck me when we received evidence. Perhaps I may mention just two of them.

The first was how reluctant were some in the food and drinks industry to give us any evidence, which makes one entirely suspicious of their motives. They were reluctant to come to the table to discuss the problems and found every excuse not to co-operate. That came out pretty clearly in the evidence we received. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has just said, it is only where the Government have taken firm action that the industry has made significant changes. I say to my noble friend the Minister, who I know has advocated, supported and encouraged this industry, as I do, that a very black cloud hangs over it with regard to this issue. He will have to kick it hard to get it to co-operate in the way that it should.

The second point that struck me was the need for a cross-departmental response. We took evidence from the Minister for Health and Social Care. She—or rather the department—has been sitting on reports and consultations for some considerable months, and blamed their lack of implementation on Covid. I therefore asked the Minister what would have happened if there had been no Covid. We received the reply, “I shall have further consultations”. Let us have some action. The noble Lord and his department may well be taking an active role, but I am not at all convinced that the Department of Health and Social Care is doing so. That is why I support what the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said about the need for the cross-departmental analysis to be done at ministerial level. It is all very well doing it at official level but if it can be kicked into the long grass, I am afraid that it will be. This has to be driven politically by Ministers at the highest level, and probably chaired by someone such as Michael Gove as head of the Cabinet Office. That sort of impetus is needed.

I should say to my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, that 18 months is too long—I agree with my noble friend Lady McIntosh on that. We need a speedy reply. My noble friend the Minister has reassured me to some extent, but he has a much more difficult job than he anticipates, given the need to take the other government departments such as health, education and the Home Office with him on this matter.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is wonderful to hear that a food strategy will happen and be reported upon following Henry Dimbleby’s initial reports. I too urge the Government to respond in less than 18 months; we really do not have time to waste.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and other speakers, I believe that the strategy needs to be tough. The industry has had its own way for a very long time: it has been run on the politics of the supermarket and we have seen the chaos that this has caused, not just to our health and eating habits but to our agriculture, as we have just been discussing. I urge toughness, joined-up government, a strong position of leadership and a willingness to tread on some commercial toes as we start to look for other ways in which to grow and eat our food.

I am pleased to hear from the Minister that action on food security will include household food security. I thank him for the meetings that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and I have had with him in the past few weeks. I am glad that the issue of household food insecurity will be pegged to something, and that that something is the Government’s Eatwell plate. Today, the poorest 20% of households would need to spend 39% of their disposable income on food in order to eat the diet that we recommend for people to be healthy. We all know that that will not happen. If you are in a rich household, it will cost you 8%. This is a really big issue and it would be pointless for household food security to be judged on whether one was getting access to enough sugary cereals and sweets. So I am very pleased to hear what the Minister said, in the Chamber, in front of everybody.

It has been a delight to work with the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, on this. I am very pleased to have witnessed this day, because I have spent most of my life working on food policy and, quite frankly, as I have said before, all I have done on the whole is put bits of Elastoplast over the bleeding wound. There is now a chance to reshape the food system for the better.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)[V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. A national food strategy is not something that it might be nice to have; it is essential.

Like others, I am grateful to the Minister for his comments and support for a food strategy. As we enter the inevitable second wave of Covid-19 infections and a possible second lockdown, food security is at the top of everyone’s thoughts. Children affected by lockdown are struggling. Ensuring that they have enough to eat has become a national cause. The Welsh Government have announced that free school meal provision will be extended through every school holiday until Easter 2021. The vouchers provided to be exchanged for a meal must be for healthy food. The other nations in the UK should now follow the Welsh example. I can think of nothing worse than a child in the UK—one of the richest countries in the world—being hungry while others are overeating with the resultant health problems. During the national regimes of the 1940s and early 1950s, obesity and diabetes were hardly heard of. I am not suggesting that we return to those strictures.

I recently listened to an interview with a Durham University student who was in a unit with five other students. They had all paid for catered meals. Due to lockdown, they were virtually imprisoned in their accommodation, with a kettle and a toaster. They were provided with food boxes that contained “junk food”—the student’s words, not mine—of Pot Noodles, crisps, snack bars and three apples, the only healthy food. The next box, supposed to last for 11 days, contained no fruit at all but the same selection of junk food. Never was it more obvious that a proper food strategy was essential in order to protect these students.

The other place has indicated that it wishes to wait for the final report from Henry Dimbleby and that the Lords amendment is unnecessary. I hope that our prodding will ensure that something is done, and done quickly, once that report is published. The grass appears to grow faster than we would like, and 18 months is far too long, as other Peers have said.

I fully support all the comments previously made on a national food strategy and am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for their expertise and perseverance in this important matter. I look forward to the Government’s consultation once Henry Dimbleby’s work has been completed. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, that monitoring the outcome will be essential.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Does any other Member in the Chamber wish to speak? If not, I call the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott.

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, this has been a really excellent debate. I find it quite astonishing, however, at the time of a huge public health crisis—not just in our country but across the world—due to poor diet, as well as an environmental crisis, that we would ever consider importing into our country food that was of lower standards. It worries me, because I agree with all the words that have been said by the Minister—I wish he were higher up the food chain, as it were—and I also sincerely accept his words that these standards will be maintained, somehow or another, but if that is true, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, pointed out, it was part of the manifesto, what precisely is the real objection to writing such a clause into the heart of the Bill?

We have worked, in the food industry and, indeed, through outfits such as the FSA, once chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and it has taken 20 years of UK public policy just to achieve clear front-of-pack labelling, yet right now we are considering doing trade deals with a country, the USA, that says it is concerned that

“labelling food with high sugar content … is not particularly useful in changing consumer behaviour”.

Would anyone say that about the way we market cigarettes? Would anyone in this country say that sugar is not a primary cause of obesity—or, indeed, the primary cause of under-12s going into hospital to have all their teeth out?

As has been mentioned, including by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, 40% of the food we eat is eaten outside of the home. In most cases, of course, it means that we as consumers have absolutely no clue about how the food gets to us and what it is. Who remembers the horse meat scandal, which showed that the meat had travelled from some 10 destinations throughout Europe before finally ending up in burgers in well-known supermarkets? I do not see any way, unless it is written into the Bill, for us to stop this cheaper food coming here. Sadly, we know how often price affects the way people buy.

Agriculture Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 9th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, as always, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. I fully agree with all his points. I thank the Government very much for how much they have moved on this issue and how open they have been in discussion. Again, I rather wish that the Minister sitting here was going to be across the Trade Bill because, as the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, said, this is not necessarily guaranteed.

I know that the Trade and Agriculture Commission is not in the Agriculture Bill. I have been in your Lordships’ House for a little over two years and food standards have become a very big issue. You can see its popularity across the country. I am grateful to the Government for having, over the weekend, agreed to feeding kids through the winter, but this should not have happened because of pressure from a footballer. It should have happened anyway. We should never have been in that position. If we do not get some things right now—in the last hard yards, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said—we may be looking at problems again in the future. I thought the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, about Danish pigs was very salient. We say that we have high standards of animal welfare, yet we are prepared to have Danish bacon and Danish sausages. Danish pigs, along with Polish pigs, are the worst-treated pigs this side of Asia. I do not know a lot about Asian things, but those standards are appalling.

I ask the Government first, on the point from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs: how will all this be administered and how much will it cost? I also make a plea that public health, in terms of how goods and food are brought into this country, is given a high priority. Covid has shown us, and indeed the whole world, that too much unhealthy food—that is, obesity—has dire impacts on the nation’s health. If we do not somehow regulate the food coming into this country, we risk a race to the bottom and getting a greater preponderance of unhealthy, cheap, calorie-dense and nutrition-poor food. It will end up with the poorest people, probably many of those who will be in receipt of the Government’s current generosity with the Marcus Rashford campaign.

It seems naive in the extreme to imagine that a country—whether Australia or America, both of which consider that labelling food high in sugar is not useful in changing consumer behaviour—will not somehow try to jump into our marketplace unless we have some strong regulations. One of those could be the presence of public health in the TAC.

The other issue that worries me—I would love to be told that I should not worry—is how this will be rated. How will the voices in the TAC be heard? It is going to be a casting vote. What happens when it is a decision between taking Tim Tams—the Prime Minister’s current snack from Australia—or something healthy and nutritious? Will one vote count for more or will they all be equal? It seems really complicated to put all these decisions into the hands of a group of people, however fantastic they all are, and expect them to make easy and clear recommendations if issues of public health are not right at the top of the list.