Agriculture Bill

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansarad): House of Lords
Tuesday 7th July 2020 Lords Chamber

Again, I hope the Minister will give some assurance, although I think we would like more than that, that there will be no question of pursuing a strategy of support that did not take full account of the less favoured areas that are absolutely crucial in all the devolved Administrations—Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—but equally important in the north of England and the south-west. Although people in the south may not see how important this is, the Government need to make it clear that they understand that if you have a policy of regional development, which is a very big commitment of the present Government, ensuring adequate support for upland and hill farmers throughout the United Kingdom is absolutely essential.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

I call the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. We lost the connection earlier, but I understand that we can now hear him.

[The Earl of Dundee [V]]

Thank you. I will resume at the point where I was cut off.

In itself, Clause 1 is evidence of an impressive vision. The Government are committed to preserving the natural environment, thus competent environmental land management can become a clear aim for farmers, who are properly rewarded if they achieve this.

Nevertheless, so far, in other respects the Bill is less clear. What are the Government’s plans for sustainable food production? Post Brexit will they develop new and even higher standards than those of the EU, or instead set aside land for afforestation, public access and wildlife conservation, while leaving agriculture to market forces, as do the United States and Brazil?

Among those options, and although unstated, no doubt the Government would prefer that which combines high standards for environmental land management with those for sustainable food production. Yet, if so, how can these two objectives best be realised? British farmers also perform and compete against cheap imports from the United States, and those from EU states pay a high level of agricultural subsidies.

Perhaps some of the answer, beginning at home, lies in how, in order to further these twin objectives, the Government might better prioritise and adjust existing incentives within the Bill. For if that adjustment is made now in the first place, there will be a greater chance through time and against external market forces. Much of those current joint aims for the United Kingdom of good environmental land management and sustainable food production can be attained.

Section 1 details 10 purposes eligible for financial assistance, and it is certainly right that funding should be provided for each of them if carried out by a farm. Yet where multiple purposes are addressed, the Bill could now be amended so that a financial bonus would apply. For example, if a farm accomplishes fewer than four of the purposes, it simply receives funding for each of them. However, if instead the farm were to carry out more than four purposes, such as five or six of them, it could receive a bonus grant for achieving that level of multiple purposes. There could be a further multiple purpose supplementary payment if seven or eight of them had been carried out, then a further and final one for achieving 10 purposes. For what we want to achieve is that farms should receive supplementary funding for carrying out many or even all the purposes. That is because doing so puts them at a commercial disadvantage to other farms, which might adopt only a few of the purposes—hence the connection between Amendments 1 and 74.

Amendment 1, as a probing expedient, seeks to illustrate that, while the Government’s vision to encourage both good environmental management and sustained food production together is much to be welcomed, nevertheless, the effect of their plans for delivering financial incentives is uncertain in two respects. The first is as a result of the challenge to UK food production from a combination of cheap imports from the United States and from the highly subsidised agricultural products from the European Union states. Secondly, and as already outlined, it is owing to the risk in the first place of an inadequate response to incentives arising from an inconsistent and anomalous delivery to recipient United Kingdom farms, whereby those best at multiple purposes are still insufficiently recompensed within the Bill as it is.

Amendment 74 offers a partial solution through a detailed bonus scheme, as already outlined, whereby farms carrying out multiple purposes would come to be rewarded better and in a fairer way than they are at present within the Bill. Through time, and in spite of international market competition, that would in turn also increase the likelihood that within the United Kingdom the Government could achieve more of the joint aims themselves of good environmental management and sustained food production.

Amendment 45, the third in my name in this grouping, seeks to encourage the purchase of domestically produced animal feed with the intention of reducing carbon emissions from imported feed. Considering the United Kingdom’s agricultural capacity relative to its population, it would be unrealistic to restrict imported animal feed too much. However, these imports have three major disadvantages. First, they undermine the United Kingdom’s food security; secondly, there is the carbon footprint arising from their production and transport; and, thirdly, there is the environmental damage which in the first place their cultivation causes in certain countries, notably soybeans in Brazil and Argentina. Efforts should thus be made to augment the supply of home-grown animal feed. At the same time, United Kingdom importers ought to be encouraged to buy feed from countries demonstrating similar environmental standards to those of the United Kingdom, with the process perhaps guided by international certification bodies. Hence, bearing in mind the Bill’s focus on environmental land management, this amendment on animal feeds simply calls for improved consistency of standards between what the United Kingdom imports and what it produces domestically.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Young of Old Scone [V]]

My Lords, I am afraid that I want to take a different position from several noble Lords who have already spoken about the amendments in this group. I speak specifically to reject Amendments 64 and 106 and other amendments in the group that would restrict payments to agricultural, horticultural and forestry land only. This Bill is about delivering public good through land management, and the environmental land management scheme will be one of the major ways in which the Government’s 25-year environment plan will be delivered. Therefore, although many of these public goods will be delivered by farmers and farm businesses, not all of them will: for example, restoration of non-agricultural habitats, such as blanket bogs, and the creation of non-commercial woodlands, such as community woodlands, both of which are important for combating climate change. I therefore do not support these amendments, which would limit the scope to agricultural, horticultural and forestry management rather than wider land management. These would reduce the Bill’s effectiveness in delivering its key purposes.

A number of noble Lords have said that this is an Agriculture Bill and so it should be about farmers and food production. I do not agree: I believe that this Bill is not about modest changes in the way we support and incentivise farmers but about how in the future we support anyone who manages land to deliver the things that the nation needs from the land. This will include food production, but it will also include a wide range of other things. This Bill is not simply about filling the gap left by leaving the common agricultural policy; it is about setting a vision for the future of the way the scarce resource of land is managed. Farmers will form a vital part of this transition and need to be helped and supported to make this transition, but it cannot be about farmers alone. Can the Minister assure me that the restrictions in these amendments will not be accepted?

I turn to Amendments 118 and 121 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. I share her view that the checking, enforcement and monitoring of the new financial support schemes cannot be optional: they have to be required on the face of the Bill.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, has scratched, so I now call the noble Lord, Lord Empey.

[Lord Empey [V]]

My Lords, one theme that has come up today has been the theme of definition. In the last group, the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, led to a discussion of the differences between “conserve” and “enhance”. In this group, the noble Earl, Lord Devon, has drawn our attention to the difference between “enjoyment” and “health and wellbeing”. I am inclined to agree with him on that, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, did so as well. When we look at access to the countryside, clearly a balance has to be struck: where large amounts of taxpayers’ money are being invested in the countryside, then quite clearly many people wish to seek access to it. I understand that, in certain cases, people who seek access to the countryside under certain circumstances can cause harm in so far as they can spread diseases and so on. Lots of people feel that, as part of the country, they need to have access and have a right to have access, so it is a question of getting the balance right. The point that the noble Earl, Lord Devon, was making was that by making health and well-being a public good, it categorises something. Enjoyment is such a broadly based point that it lacks any kind of clarity. Those terms should be revisited.

On the general point about access to the countryside, we encourage people for health and well-being purposes to go there if they are resident in cities. However, we have to remember that many people live in the countryside who are not farmers, and there are many parts of the agricultural sector that are not farms. Some people have this idea that it is the job of people who work in the countryside to make sure that the hedges are well trimmed so that when the city dwellers come out at the weekend, it all looks very pretty. That is not what it is—it is not a museum. It cannot be maintained in aspic. The rural areas are living, working workplaces in many cases, and we want to ensure that that continues. However, I say to the Minister that the question of balance requires some consistency in how we define these matters, particularly when we are establishing public good. The general thrust of the Bill is good, but we must put more effort into consistency of definition.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. We cannot hear him so we will move on to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and will try to get the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, back later.

[Lord De Mauley [V]]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 103, the impact of which would be to limit the range of activities benefiting from the Secretary of State’s financial support outlined in the Bill. In line with my comments on the last group of amendments, I consider that to do so would risk closing off the incentives for farmers and landowners to use native equines for conservation grazing in regions away from where they are traditionally bred. For Dartmoor, for example, this would dramatically shrink the size of the sink where the rare genetics of the Dartmoor hill pony, whose benefits I spoke of in my comments on the last group, would be safely held.

Such ex situ sinks are essential if the populations on Dartmoor ever need to be replenished: for example, if the semi-wild herds on the moor were devastated by disease. That would risk the loss of the rare genetics such ponies hold, which are so important to surviving and grazing on the uplands, creating habitats for wildlife. It would shrink a market selling native ponies as conservation grazers and would exacerbate animal welfare problems. If not sold, semi-wild native ponies, which must leave the upland herds in order to comply with number limits imposed by Defra agri-environment schemes, will be culled. So I am therefore very concerned by this amendment.